


Blue Moon Rising

by aceofhearts61



Category: True Detective
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Anti-Religion, Aromantic, Aromantic Character, Aromantic!Rust Cohle, Asexual Character, Asexual!Rust Cohle, Asexuality, Backrubs, Birthday Party, Child Abuse, Churches & Cathedrals, Compulsory Sexuality, Cuddling & Snuggling, Depression, Drunkenness, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Face Punching, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heterosexual Sex, Heterosexuality, Homophobia, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Anti-Asexuality, Internalized Homophobia, Kisses, Loneliness, Loss, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Marriage, Massage, Nonmonogamy, Other, Panic Attacks, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Kissing, Polyamory Negotiations, Queerplatonic Relationships, Relationship Negotiation, Secret Relationship, Self-Hatred, Sex, Sex-Repulsed!Rust Cohle, Sexual Content, Sharing a Bed, Slow Dancing, Smoking, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Teasing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-01-16 14:36:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 49,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1351027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aceofhearts61/pseuds/aceofhearts61
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marty, Maggie, and Rust become a thing. </p><p>AU set in 1995, after the false solve of Dora Lange's case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how the hell this got so long, and it's not done yet. It'll probably be finished with just one more part.

Louisiana

1995

* * *

 

 

It starts with the lawnmower.

Marty comes back inside after Rust leaves, and Maggie gives him that look. _You’re an asshole._

“What?” he says.

“I need to talk to you,” she says.

They go into the master bedroom, leaving the girls in front of the TV.

“What is your problem?” Maggie asks him, keeping her voice lowered.

“What are you talking about?” says Marty. “What did I do?”

“I’m not blind, Marty. You were mad at him. What are you, jealous?”

“No. Of course not. I just don’t like another man mowing my lawn. This is my home, it’s my lawn, and there’s no reason for him to be here unless I invite him.”

“Jesus,” says Maggie. “He was doing something nice to show gratitude for our hospitality. You haven’t taken that mower out of the garage in weeks. I asked him to stay because, you know what, Marty? That man is lonely.”

“Ah, God....”

“Maybe you’re not paying attention, or maybe you just don’t care. But I do, all right? You said so yourself, he doesn’t have any friends. He lives alone. And after what happened to his daughter and his marriage, I can’t imagine how hard it must be for him. Unless he’s done something to you, you should have a little compassion.”

“He can take care of himself, all right? He’s a grown man,” Marty says. “And you don’t know him like I do. You aren’t the one driving him around all over Louisiana, listening to him say crazy things. If you heard him, you wouldn’t want him around the girls.”

“Oh, please. He’s been nothing but polite to the girls, and to me. He’s better when he’s around us. He _needs_ connection. He’s a human being. You’re the closest thing he has to a friend, and half the time, you’re just plain mean to him.”

“How would you know?”

“Because I know you, Marty. You didn’t even have to try throwing him out, and he knew you wanted him gone. How nice could you possibly be, when it’s just the two of you?”

“He ain’t a ray of sunshine either.”

Maggie, her arms now crossed, rolls her eyes and walks out of the bedroom.

Marty stands there with his hands on his hips, feeling like the bad guy again. He hates it when Maggie makes him the bad guy. And now he wonders if he should feel guilty about shooing Rust off the way he did.

* * *

 

Rust has had sex with a handful of women throughout his life, but he doesn’t need it. He’s never particularly liked it, either. Something about it feels unnatural to him, uncomfortable psychologically, like he’s putting on an act. There have been times where he fucked his girlfriend, his wife, a date and had to go sit in the bathroom by himself afterward, trying to breathe through the shit feeling. There have even been times when he’s jerking off in the shower because he can’t help it, hating the whole business, wishing his libido would die and leave him in peace.

He’s intellectualized sex in the abstract and in the context of his own life too many times to count, in the privacy of his own mind, and he realizes that it’s a performance expected of him—as a man, as a human—the price of romantic connection that seems to be the only available opportunity for companionship and love. He asked Claire to marry him because she was the closest friend he’d ever had, and he thought he wanted domesticity, the nuclear family, the American Dream that now makes him scoff at how delusional and desperate people are to escape their essential isolation from all other life forms.

He lost his virginity at sixteen, to an older woman who knew what she was doing. He came pretty quick and pretty hard, but it wasn’t a good experience. He hadn’t been sure he actually wanted to go through with it before he did. Since then, he’s fucked women just because they wanted it, because he wanted them to care, because he needed to get rid of his erection, because he wanted children, because he needed to be touched, because he was lonely, because he thought that maybe it would give him whatever he was missing inside, something he could never identify. He’s never had sex for its own sake. Most of the orgasms he’s had in his life have been eclipsed by an intense sensation of emptiness that overwhelms him immediately after. He might even call it disappointment.

He had good sex with Claire, before Sofia’s death. He had terrible sex with her too, after. Even when it was good, he could’ve gone without it. He never tried telling her that because he was smart enough to know it would’ve ended badly.

Maybe he was born with some kind of disorder. They say the drive to fuck is intrinsically human, but then again, self-delusion seems to be too. So he doesn’t feel that bad about deviating from the norm.

* * *

 

It isn’t until after they kill Ledoux and DeWall that Marty notices: Rust’s grown on him. It doesn’t make a lick of sense. Rust Cohle is the biggest prick that Marty’s ever met, and Marty could rattle off at least ten different things about the man that irritates him. But Rust’s grown on him. Maybe it’s being partners. Maybe it’s spending so much of their time alone together. Maybe it’s the fact that they share the secret of what really happened at the Ledoux property. Maybe it’s a simple combination of Marty now having the highest close rate of his career and Rust saying something halfway funny once in a while. Whatever the reason, Marty remembers what Maggie told him that day Rust mowed their lawn and gets to thinking.

They’re sitting across from each other at their desks one afternoon, when Marty asks Rust if he wants to come over for dinner again. Rust looks up at him, pauses, then nods and says, “Sure.”

“Seven o’clock,” says Marty. “Like last time.”

Rust shows up on time, sober, still in his work clothes and wearing his jacket. He brings Maggie flowers for the table, which pleases her, and things go a hell of a lot better than they did the first time.

After the girls have gone to bed and it’s just the three adults at the table with a bottle of red wine, there’s a moment where Marty looks across at Rust on the opposite end and Rust meets his gaze and something new occurs to Marty: a strange sense of balance, like there was always an empty spot between him and Maggie and now that Rust’s filling it, they can all breathe a little easier.

Rust looks down at the table and makes a small throat-clearing noise. Marty can see out of the corner of his eye Maggie glancing between the two men, as if she’s just seen what Marty’s feeling.

“I better get going,” Rust says. “Thank you for the meal, Maggie. It was great.”

“You’re welcome,” she says, a new, sweet warmth in her tone. Like peach pie.

“We’ll have you over again sometime,” says Marty. “Soon.”

Rust nods. “’preciate it.”

Marty walks him out to his truck and stands at the driver’s door once Rust’s behind the wheel with his window rolled down. “Hey, ah—been meaning to ask you, what do you think of spring cleaning?”

“Why?” says Rust.

“Well, I just figured, maybe you want to take care of it around here, seeing as how you liked mowing the lawn.”

Rust actually smiles. “See you Monday, Marty.”

He starts the truck and backs out of the driveway, and Marty watches him go until his tail lights turn a corner.

* * *

 

Maggie was raised a good, church-going girl. She’s been a faithful wife since her wedding day. She votes Republican. She’s doing her best to raise her daughters to be moral, honest people. She decided to give Marty a second chance after their trial separation because she never wanted her kids to come from a broken home, and part of her, the part that’s been in love with Marty since she was twenty-one, wants to believe that he can change.

But Maggie can think for herself. She does allow herself to question things. She allows herself to be imperfect, to consider what she wants regardless of Marty, to set aside the _should’s_ and listen to her heart.

She’s having Sunday brunch with the women she knows through her church, all of them wives and mothers in their 30s and 40s, when one of them starts telling the group a story she heard of a man involved with two women who not only know about each other but live with him together. There’s four children, and nobody’s even married. Maggie’s friends twitter about how outrageous it is, and she sips on her lemonade, at once torn between her instinctual monogamy and curious about how else a situation like that might look.

Marty promised her that he would never cheat again, and he’s starting to try harder, to be a good man. Maggie wants that, wants him to be faithful to her, but the seed of doubt was planted soon as that trashy paralegal came to her door. It’s already sprouted roots. She can’t rip it out.

She lies awake in bed several nights after that, Marty snoring softly beside her, and tries to imagine taking a different approach to her marriage. She won’t have another woman moving into her house, fucking Marty in her bed. She doesn’t want Marty falling in love with someone else. She can’t imagine having sex with another man, while being Marty’s wife—even if he could theoretically live with it.

She thinks of Rust. He’s a good-looking man, but she’s never been attracted to him sexually. He’s not her type, and even if he was, she’s more entrenched in her ties to Marty than she cares to admit. She doesn’t want to fuck Rust and knows that Marty would sooner get a divorce than let her do it. But she thinks of Rust because he’s become their friend, hers and Marty’s, and she likes him better than all the other colleagues Marty’s brought around since she married him. She thinks of Rust because she knows that he wants the Harts’ marriage to survive, because he thought of her kids when she was planning on ending it, because he is just as aware of Marty’s faults as she is and still sticks up for him even when Marty’s not there to see it.

She thinks of Rust in his house with no furniture. She thinks of him at her dinner table. She thinks of him shying away from her offers to find him a date and his admission that he doesn’t want any more children.

She doesn’t know where she’s going with this, but she can feel an idea shaping up in her head, mysterious and indescribable.

* * *

 

Rust has never been in love. But he craves love. Not the crazy, egocentric bullshit most people fool themselves into thinking is love. Not the lust-sex-romantic-theatrics cocktail that’s more of an acid trip than his own post-drug abuse hallucinations and synesthesia put together. No, what he wants is what he felt the first time he saw his daughter, bundled up in a hospital blanket and no bigger than a football. What he wants is what he felt the first time she said “Da.” What he wants is what he saw every time he came home from work and her eyes lit up like he was the greatest thing to ever happen in human history. Sometimes, he thinks he just wants her—and depending on the day, he either accepts that for the cruel and hopeless longing it is or rejects it out of his own pathetic desperation for hope. Hope that if he doesn’t kill himself in the next five years, he’ll eventually feel better.

Sofia wasn’t the only person Rust loved. He loved Claire, until he couldn’t anymore. He loved his pop, even after he left the man to go his own way and realized that maybe he was growing up into someone his pop couldn’t like. He loved his mom as much as he could without feeling the unresolved sting of her abandonment, to the border of anger.

He’s had a few friends, all of them men except for one, who he cared about a great deal. But he’s not sure he’s ever had a friend he loved. He doesn’t count his ex-wife because she saw him as her lover, her husband, not her friend. And Rust himself sees sex and friendship as two different forces, usually opposed. From time to time, he’s thought about what it might be like to love a man in friendship, the kind of friendship where there’s none of that macho pretension that saturates police culture, the kind that’s got more to it than shootin’ the shit after work at the local watering hole and coming over for Super Bowl Sunday.

Nietzsche wrote, “The friend should be the festival of the earth to you....” He himself barely had friends. He believed that superior friendship was rare, and simple-minded people would blame that on his own lack of friends. But Rust knows better. You don’t have a string of philosophers from different schools come to the same conclusion about something over a three thousand year period by accident.       

* * *

 

The Harts are at the church’s annual Easter picnic, watching their daughters hunt for eggs on the green with the other children, when Maggie says,

“Would you be happier in this marriage if you could sleep with other people?”

Marty turns his head and looks at her. “What? No. Of course not. I told you—”

“I know what you told me. I know you’ve been trying to change, Marty, and things have been better..... But if this is going to work, we can’t kid ourselves.”

“Where is this coming from?” he says. “I swear to you, I haven’t done anything wrong with anybody since we got back together. I promised you I wouldn’t.”

“Yeah. And how long are you going to keep that promise this time?” She says it without any anger or bitterness. Just an honest question, in a soft voice.

“I’m doing everything I can to earn your trust. All right? I don’t know what else you want from me.”

“You haven’t answered the question,” Maggie says, holding onto her beer by the sweaty bottleneck.

“What the hell kinda question is it, Maggie? Are you picking a fight or what?”

“No. I’m asking you seriously. There are men in this world who can’t have sex with just one woman the rest of their life, no matter who she is. No matter how much they love her. If you’re one of them, then you’re going to cheat again, and I realize now that if I expect you to be something other than what you are, I’m helping you do it. I’m not fond of the idea of you screwing around with other women, Marty—but what I can’t stand is the lying. The dishonesty. That’s the real betrayal.”

“So, so, what are you saying? That you’re giving me permission to have affairs?”

“I’m saying we should consider our options.”

The conversation doesn’t pick up again until they’re driving home, just the two of them in the car because the girls went off with friends. They’re a few minutes from their street, when Marty works his mouth and says, “What are you really thinking? How would it work? I get to—to go cruising for tail as long as I give you a heads up first? Am I supposed to let em know I’m married?”

Maggie stares out her window, sitting in the passenger seat next to him, at the houses in their neighborhood and the trees standing in front yards. “I’m not going to encourage you to fuck other people all the time,” she says. “But if you feel like you have to, we can talk about it. It’s probably best that I don’t know all the details. There would be rules. No hookers. The girls can’t know about any of it. You’d have to get tested for STDs on a regular basis.”

He’s quiet for a few beats. Thinking. “What about you?” he says.

“What about me?”

“Would you go looking for someone else? You want to fuck other men?”

“I don’t know,” she says, after a pause. “I think if you have the freedom to see other people, I should have the same. But I can’t say if or how much I would act on it.”

“So, if I decide I don’t like you getting with someone else....”

“Then, you can either become monogamous again or walk away.”

Marty pulls the car into their driveway and parks it, but the two of them sit there, not looking at each other.

“This isn’t right,” he says, after a minute or two. “What we’re entertaining..... it isn’t the way good people live.”

“No, good people cheat behind each other’s back and then get divorced,” says Maggie.

Marty exhales through his nostrils.

Maggie finally turns her head and looks at him. “There’s something else I want. In exchange.”

“What?” he says, making eye contact with her.

“Rust.”

Marty frowns softly, confusion giving way to disbelief. “Rust? You want to fuck Rust?”

Maggie shakes her head. “No. Not now. Not unless it feels natural, for him and for me. I want.... I want him closer. To us. To our family. I want him to be a part of it.”

“How do you mean? You want him over for dinner more?”

Maggie actually smiles with her teeth, almost shakes her head. Sometimes, Marty is so simple, she can’t believe it. “Maybe. But that’s not what I mean. I mean, I want it to feel like he’s a part of us. I want him to feel like this—” she looks through the windshield and the window in her door at the house and Marty’s lawn, “is home.”

Marty blinks several times and says, “I have no idea what in the hell that means. He’s a grown man, not a kid. You can’t adopt him, and if you don’t want to fuck him, then what else is there?”

“I don’t know, Marty, friendship? Family? I’m not saying I think he should move in, but he could be more to us. To you. And me.”

“You’re talking as if you know he’s on board with this. Whatever it is. Maybe you haven’t noticed, over tea time, but Rust Cohle is not big on people. He lives the way he does because he wants to. What makes you think he’s going to like the idea of being some kinda weird third wheel here?”

“You let me worry about talking to him. Do we have a deal or not?”

Marty and Maggie look at each other across the front seats of the car for a long stretch, neither of them sure, until Marty nods.

“Deal.”

* * *

 

Rust is sitting in his living room, facing the wall where he pins all of the file clippings of whatever case he’s currently working on, smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee. He’s got the mug set on his knee and elbow of his smoking arm on the metal armrest of his fold up chair. His eyes track across the photographs and maps and charts of this three-child homicide case, and he thinks about the fact that he doesn’t have any pictures of Sofia around here. Of the ones he and Claire had, Rust didn’t keep many. What he’s got, he stashed in a cigar box that he keeps in the closet of the master bedroom he doesn’t use. He hasn’t looked at them in a while.

She’d be almost ten now. He’s tried to picture what she’d look like, what kind of personality she’d have, but he knows none of it’s true. He can only guess, and he’s probably wrong when he does. So, he remembers her the way she was.

Somebody knocks on his door. He gets up to answer it after a second, cigarette in his lips and coffee mug in hand.

Maggie’s outside, standing there in a floral print dress with buttons down the front. Rust lets her in and goes back to his chair.

“Something wrong?” he says.

She stays on the kitchen tile, back of her waist against the counter edge, facing him. “No,” she says. “I just need to tell you something, and it’s not the kind of thing you say over the phone.”

Rust eyes her, uncertain, sipping on his coffee.

“Marty and I have come to an agreement,” Maggie says. “We’re both free to see other people, as long as it’s casual and we’re honest about it. It was my idea. I’m not looking for someone new, but I know Marty. It just seems like the sensible thing to do.”

Not much startles Rust, but this is one of those times.

“You don’t approve?”

“I don’t have an opinion one way or another,” Rust says. “I’m just surprised at you. You’re not as conservative you look.”

“Yeah, well..... Conservatism hasn’t given me the marriage I wanted. Anyway—I wanted to tell you in case you see Marty with someone else or he mentions it. You don’t have to feel like you’re covering for him.”

Rust nods and looks away, at the wall in front of him. He thinks the move is smart, however unconventional. He knows a pussy hound when he sees one, and as much as he wanted Maggie to take Marty back, Rust didn’t believe that his partner would stay away from other women forever.

Maggie’s wringing her hands, watching him. “Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Do you like being alone?”

Rust glances at her and takes a drag on his Camel. “Whether I do or I don’t is irrelevant,” he says. “I did the marriage and kids thing once. I’m not doing it again.”

“Why does it have to be one or the other?” says Maggie. “What if there’s a way to not be alone, without being married or having kids?”

Now Rust looks at her straight on. He can’t get a read on her or what she’s really talking about. It unsettles him. “What do you want, Maggie?” he says.

Maggie hesitates only for a moment, then beelines for Rust and kneels on the carpet in front of him. She covers his hand that’s wrapped around his coffee mug and looks into his eyes, some kind of new energy in her.

“You’re a good man, Rust. I trust you. Marty trusts you. I know he can be rough around the edges, but I’ve been with him for eleven years, I know him, and I can tell that he cares about you in a way he hasn’t really cared about the other friends he’s made on the job. He likes you, Rust. I like you too.”

Rust stares at her, speechless, suddenly feeling overwhelmed and vulnerable. He can’t tell if she wants to fuck him or not, and now he’s nervous. He sure as hell doesn’t want to fuck her, no matter what Marty thinks.

“I know I’m probably not making any sense,” says Maggie, her other hand on Rust’s knee. “I’m not sure I can describe what it is I’m trying to pitch here. I just.... want you know that Marty and I are here for you. If you need anything, you can ask us.”

“Okay,” he says, voice deep and husky, like he’s talking to someone dangerous. “I hear you.”

Maggie has a hint of a smile on her face, and her hand stays warm on Rust’s knee. Her eyes gleam and she starts to rise. She leans up to Rust and kisses him on the cheek. Tender and lingering. Her hand on his neck, fingertips over his jaw. He closes his eyes in spite of himself. It’s been so long since he had anything like tenderness in his life.

She starts to pull away slightly, then kisses his mouth—tentative, testing. Rust tenses, still holding onto his mug and his cigarette, leaning back in his chair. He doesn’t want to go down this road with her. He also doesn’t want to reject her after what she’s told him. He welcomes the touch—he’s starved for it, no matter how much sex he’s had since his divorce—but if he lets it go on, she’ll probably take it further.

Maggie trails her hand lightly down his chest, touching her forehead to his now without kissing him. She makes it to his belt buckle and opens her eyes, looking at his face. “Do you want to?”

Rust’s dick starts to tingle. He can’t help it.

“Marty said it’s okay.”

Rust swallows and musters up the courage to tell her, “Look, I appreciate you trying to help, but this isn’t what I need. Sorry.”

Maggie nods and straightens up, standing in front of him now. “You let me know if you change your mind.”

She starts to head for the front door, and Rust breathes with a relief before calling out.

“Maggie.”

She stops and looks back at him. “Did you mean everything you said?”

“Yes, I meant it. Of course, I did.” She pauses. “Honestly, Rust, I don’t need to have sex with you. I’m offering because I know how men are. If I can get you to feel a little less lonely, I’ll do what it takes. Marty’ll back me up on it.”

Rust draws on his cigarette, coffee now lukewarm, and says, “Don’t try to fuck me out of pity.”

Maggie looks at him and nods, then goes on her way.

 

* * *

 

Marty goes back to the strip joint where Tyrone Weems’ ex-girlfriend dances. He picks a redhead knockout with legs a mile long and watches her over his beer, giving away his ones and fives gradually. It’s been a while since he picked up a stripper. College twelve or thirteen years ago, before he met Maggie. Part of him wants the redhead just to prove to himself he can still score in this scenario.

But the longer he sits there, the more his interest wanes. He thinks about Maggie and how it’s been weeks since they fooled around. Thinks about the way they were when they first got together. Thinks about those first few years they were married. Couldn’t get enough of each other. Had sex all the time, all over their apartment and then at the house, before she got pregnant with Audrey. He thought she was the hottest woman in the state, totally out of his league. He’d won the lottery, marrying her.

The thing with Lisa wasn’t about him not loving Maggie. Wasn’t about Maggie being unattractive to him. Wasn’t about him lacking desire for his wife. Sure as hell wasn’t about wanting out of his marriage. Lisa knew from the start Marty wasn’t going to leave Maggie. That’s why she had to go flaunting her new boyfriend in front of him, wasn’t it?

Now that Marty’s been cleared to screw whoever he wants, he’s starting to wonder what it is about Maggie, that she can feel satisfied by him alone even now, and why he can’t be that way too. Sex between them hasn’t had any heat to it for years, since before Maisie was born. Maybe that’s inevitable, when you’re with someone for so long, when kids come into the picture. It’s not that he doesn’t like the sex he has with Maggie. It’s just, he misses that rush of acting on first-time lust. He likes the way it feels to be wanted, not because of love or commitment, but just because of how he looks and how he fucks.

He’s down to the last third of his beer mug when he looks up at the redhead and realizes he isn’t going to try to make a move. Not tonight. He finishes his drink, leaves a tip on the bar, and walks out.

He told Maggie he was going to be out late and probably wouldn’t make it for dinner. She didn’t ask him where he was going to be. It’s only six-twenty when he leaves the strip club, and he could make dinner if he wanted.... But before he notices that he’s doing it, he starts heading to Rust’s place.

The white porch light’s on and Rust’s truck is parked in the driveway. Marty pulls his car alongside the curb in front of the house and kills the engine, then almost starts it again to go home.

Instead, he finds himself knocking on the front door, no idea in hell what he’s here for.

Rust answers and gives him a once over, before letting him in without a word.

They go into the living room, where Rust’s mattress remains on the carpet. He’s been working, if the empty chair facing the wall full of case file shit’s any indication. There’s an ashtray on the floor next to the chair’s leg, and Rust’s got a cigarette in his mouth. He stays on his feet.

“What are you doing here?” he asks Marty.

“I was just passing through, on my way back from—somewhere. Thought I’d stop by. See if you wanted to come over for dinner.”

“Not tonight.”

Marty nods and doesn’t speak for a minute, as Rust smokes and looks off into the distance.

“Maggie said she talked to you,” Marty starts. “About our new arrangement.”

“She did,” says Rust. “Not that it’s any of my business.”

“I guess she figured.... we spend enough time together, you were going to notice sooner or later, if I.... met someone. Didn’t want you to feel like you were partaking in a lie. Or something.”

“Yeah, well.”

Marty hesitates, unaware of how much Maggie told Rust. “Did she, uh, mention anything else?”

Rust glances at him, looks away again. Aloof son of a bitch. “Listen, Marty,” he says. “I’m not a charity case. Your wife may be well-intentioned, but I don’t need to be dragged into the middle of whatever you two got going on as a part of some misguided attempt to change my life.”

“Nobody said you were, a charity case. I don’t know what she told you, but the way she and I talked about it, we agreed that we would—that we were going to watch out for you. Be your friends. Do you grasp that concept, Rust? Friends?”

Rust looks at him, dark. “Do I look like I need friends, Marty?”

“Yes,” Marty says. “As a matter of fact, you look like you’re in serious fuckin need of some friends. You don’t feel like dating anyone right now, fine, but Jesus Christ, Rust. Look at yourself. Be as honest as you think you are, look me in the eye, and tell me you aren’t the least bit depressed about the state of your personal life.”

Rust blinks, sluggish, and puffs on his cigarette. “Since when is depression solved by friendship?” he says.

Marty rolls his eyes hard. Feels like he’s talking to a God damn teenager. “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Then, he does something that surprises him as much as it surprises Rust.

He closes the space between them and pulls his partner into a hug. Wraps both his arms around Rust’s lean frame and just holds onto him.

Rust freezes, his own arms down at his sides, cigarette shrinking in his lips. He closes his eyes, his breath hitches, and a feeling flashes through him—something synesthetic he can’t identify. He hasn’t been hugged in years.

“Now, is this so bad?” Marty says, voice low in Rust’s ear.

Rust doesn’t answer. Slowly, he folds his arms around Marty, presses his palms flat to Marty’s broad back, tucks his chin into Marty’s shoulder. He’s clamping on his cigarette too hard, almost biting it.

Marty stands there, hugging Rust, startled that Rust’s hugging him back. Awed by the way he feels the other man’s body respond: Rust’s muscles softening, posture relaxing, an alien vulnerability revealing itself that he couldn’t have imagined Rust possessing. Not after all the violence he’s seen the other man engage in.

It feels like the man’s giving up, finally surrendering after going strong and alone for too long. Feels like if Marty lets him go, Rust’s going to slide to the floor like Jell-O.

“Jesus,” Marty says, quiet. “You all right?”

Rust doesn’t make a sound. He can barely breathe. He should be embarrassed, uncomfortable, scrambling to recover his image—but instead, he’s just overwhelmed by the sensation of something as kind and soft as this hug. From Marty Hart, no less.

“Come to dinner, okay?” Marty says, still not letting go. “Fuck the case for one night and just be a human being.”

Ash spills onto Marty’s shirt from the end of Rust’s cigarette. Rust curls his fingers into the fabric of the shirt, feels it give, keeps his eyes shut and holds on. He feels like he might lose it any moment, have his knees buckle under him the second Marty pulls away or faint from the overstimulation of his senses.  

“Rust.”

“I need to sit down,” Rust says, slurring his words as if drunk.

Marty walks him backward to the chair and sticks him in it, really freaked out now, resting one hand on Rust’s shoulder. “Want me to get you some water? What’s going on?”

Rust takes the cigarette stub out of his mouth, arms limp over the sides of the armrests, and breathes. He shakes his head, looking like he might be sick.

“Rust,” Marty says. “Talk to me.”

“’m fine. ‘m fine.”

Marty looks at him as Rust calms down. “Shit, man. You allergic to hugs?”

Rust chuffs and almost smiles. He realizes his hand’s shaking. “Don’t know if I have much of an appetite,” he says.

“Then, you can come watch my TV, seeing as how you don’t even fucking have one of those in here. I’m not leaving you like this.”

“Fine.”

Marty was expecting some remark about how TV’s for dumbasses. The fact that Rust’s agreeing with him so easily worries him.

Rust rides with Marty instead of taking his truck, and when the two men walk through the door of the Hart residence, Maggie smiles.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

When they’re working at the field office, around the other detectives, they act like nothing’s changed. Don’t bother Rust none, he’s a pro at undercover work, but Marty’s a little more nervous about it. He pulls off the act just fine, but Rust can tell he’s less comfortable at the office now. When it’s the two of them in the car, doing leg work, Marty mellows out considerably. Not that he’s sweet to Rust all of sudden—the two of them are like empty honey pots, not enough sweetness for a spoonful even if you scraped the sides with a straight razor—but he’s a lot less standoffish and rough.

They’re on the way back to Lafayette one afternoon, from suspect tracking in Lake Charles, when they stop at a gas station to fill up. Marty uses the restroom and grabs them a couple Cokes from the convenience store, while Rust stands against the car and smokes. Marty peers through the store windows at him as he pays the clerk, stringing words together in his mind to describe what he’s been chewing on the last few weeks.

The night Marty brought Rust home for dinner unannounced, the night of the hug, Rust stayed later than anyone could justify. No one, not Marty or Maggie or Rust himself, encouraged him to leave. They moved from the dining room table to the living room to the back porch where they sat around the table there and listened to the night buzz. They quit talking at some point and just let the silence be between them—Rust smoking and Marty nursing a beer and Maggie searching the stars. Eventually, she went on to bed and left the men alone together.

“You know, I never thanked you,” Marty said.

Rust glanced at him, back to his old somber self. “For what?”

“This. Nudgin’ Maggie in the right direction. She didn’t mention it, but I know you must’ve said something to her, helped convince her to give me a second chance.”

Rust was quiet for a beat, then put out his cigarette in the dish Maggie gave him for an ashtray he had on his lap and said, “She made her own decision. Thing you should know about women, Marty—ultimately, they choose us or reject us because of what they see in us. Men choose and reject women because of what they make us see in ourselves. I suspect that’s one of the many reasons why we’re all doomed from the start.”

Marty just blinked at him, mouth ajar, and said, “I was trying to make this a nice moment of gratitude, and you respond with that.”

Rust slid the ashtray onto the table. “Best be going. Thanks for having me over.”

He stood up and Marty stood after him and before Rust could go inside through the sliding glass door, Marty stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“Hey,” Marty said, looking at him. “You did a good thing for me and my family, and I do want to return the favor.”

Rust looked down at Marty’s hand and back up at his face. “You figure out what that means yet?” he said.

“Not exactly. But I’ll let you know when I do.”

Since then, they haven’t hugged again, but when they’re alone together, they’re easier about touch. Grip of the shoulder, hand on the back, pat on the knee, elbow tap to the side, brushing up against each other. They still give each other shit but the sharpness is slowly bleeding out of their jabs. Rust’s been over for dinner again three or four times and Marty’s taken him to a bar a handful more, after work, despite the fact that Rust tries not to drink much. Sometimes, they go to Rust’s place with a handle of whiskey or a six pack of beer and sit on the porch steps outside the front door until dinnertime.

Marty may not be as observant as Rust, but he didn’t make homicide detective in CID for nothing. He sees Rust, slowly, starting to lighten up. It’s imperceptible to everyone else, hasn’t been going on long, but Marty’s pretty sure he sees it.

“I was beginning to think you’d drowned in the toilet,” Rust says, when Marty comes out of the convenience store with the Cokes. “Or is there someone pretty working the register?”

“Fuck off,” says Marty, casual like. He offers Rust one of the bottles and gets behind the wheel of the car.

Rust gets back into shotgun, sticking the Coke between his thighs and squinting through the windshield as Marty drinks some of his.

“Rust.”

“Yeah?”

Marty pauses. Unsure how this is going to sound or if he can get his point across without embarrassing the both of them. “About the agreement I made with Maggie.... I just want you to know, in case it ever comes up, that I think I could be okay with it if you slept with her. I’m not telling you to do it. Not even really sure I want her sleeping with anyone else. But if she’s going to be with someone other than me, I’d rather it be you than a random.”

Rust stares out the windshield, unmoving, his mouth a flat line.

Marty doesn’t look at him because he can’t right now. “She prolly told you as much, but I thought you should hear it from me.”

Rust glances down into the floor of the car and says, “Marty, despite the fact that I’m not critical of what you and Maggie are doing, I’m not interested in getting tangled up in it. Too many things could go wrong. And I’m not in the habit of screwing married women.”

“Are you saying you have moral objections to the idea? Because I have a hard time believing that a man with your attitude about people and life could get moralistic about anything.”

Marty doesn’t mean to sound defensive, but he does, a little.

“What two adults decide to do in their marriage is their business. I’m just saying, it wouldn’t sit right with me, regardless of your permission.” Rust looks out his window. “I don’t think of Maggie that way. Nor do I want to.”

“Why not?” Marty says. “She’s a beautiful woman.”

“She’s also my friend. You figure out how to be friends with a woman you’re fucking, let me know.”

Marty doesn’t know how to respond to that. He’s never had female friends.

Rust turns his head toward Marty but doesn’t look at him. “Tell you the truth—I don’t enjoy sex. As unbelievable as that may be to you.”

Marty looks at him now, making a face like Rust just told him he’s spent time on a UFO. His brain trips over itself, trying to choose a reaction. All he can come up with is: “What?”

Rust blows air through his nostrils and looks through the windshield again with a pinched mouth. “Drive,” he says.

Marty sticks the car key into the ignition and turns on the engine. He looks at Rust in the seat next to him as he pulls the car into the road, thinking, _What kind of crazy bastard did I get stuck with for a partner?_

 

* * *

 

Maggie’s thinking about dinner as she wipes down the kitchen countertops, when Marty comes home from work. The girls are outside playing in the front yard as the sun slowly sinks toward the horizon line, light the color of honeysuckle flashing into the house through the living room windows.

“You know what Rust said to me today?” Marty says, standing on the other side of the island.

“What?” says Maggie, her back turned on him.

“He doesn’t like sex.”

She freezes.

“Can you believe that? Well, hell, I guess now I’ve had time to think about it, I can believe it. The man’s had about as much interest in all those dates you set him up with as I have in philosophy.”

Maggie turns around to look at her husband, face pinched and eyes wide.

“I just can’t get over it,” Marty continues. “What kinda man don’t enjoy sex? What the hell is there not to enjoy?”

“Marty, what did you say to him?”

“Nothing. I was too stunned to even ask him what he meant.”

Maggie sighs out a breath and slides her eyes to the window above the kitchen sink. She feels terrible now, for coming onto Rust that afternoon in his house. It was a mistake. She knew that as soon as she left. She thought he was tense about it because of Marty, but it didn’t have anything to do with her being married to his partner. Rust didn’t want to screw her because he doesn’t want to screw anyone.

“Here’s what don’t make sense to me,” says Marty, sitting down on one of the stools lining the island. “How’s a man get married and have a baby if he don’t like sex? Hmm? I mean, I may not be a fucking genius, but I’m smart enough to know that doesn’t make sense. It don’t even make sense physically. He at least must’ve wanted it the one time, if he and his ex-wife had a kid together. Unless he wasn’t the real father.”

“Ugh, Marty, how could you talk like that about Rust’s family?” Maggie says, crossing her arms and looking at him. “Of course, his daughter was his. Of course, she was. Women have sex they don’t like all the time. Somebody touches you the right way, you can get aroused, even if your head’s not in it.”

Marty gives her a look that’s half confused, half disbelieving. 

She almost rolls her eyes but doesn’t. “That’s all he said? He just dropped that on you for no reason and you didn’t have a conversation about it?”

“Well, no, it wasn’t for no reason.... We were talking about sex at the time. After he told me that, though, we dropped it.”

Maggie’s head swims with a thousand possible explanations for why Rust doesn’t like sex, curiosity about things like how long he’s disliked it and what he feels when he does it, if it has anything to do with his ex-wife or if something, God forbid, happened to him. She wonders if he hates all sex or only certain acts. Does he dislike kissing too? Does he not like being touched at all? More importantly, has she irreparably damaged her friendship with Rust by violating his physical boundaries?

She needs to talk to him.

“I was beginning to think he was queer,” Marty says on his way to grab the lemonade pitcher out of the fridge.

Maggie tilts her head to one side, hand on her hip, looks at Marty and says, “What if he was? You wouldn’t be friends with him?”

Marty glances at her as he sits back down. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t have a problem being partners with him, any more than I already do. It’d probably be a little weird, but I could handle it.”

“What does that mean? You have a problem with being Rust’s partner?”

Marty sort of shrugs, an uncomfortable motion.

Maggie stares at him.

“I told you before, Mags, what he’s like on the job. He knows how to tone it down in polite company, but when it’s just us, he’s about as charming as an electric chair.”

Now, Maggie does roll her eyes. “Are you his friend or do you have a problem with him, Marty?”

“I don’t have a problem with him. He’s a hard man to like, is what I mean.”

She watches Marty drink his lemonade, sunlight receding behind him, and says, “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

 

* * *

 

Rust’s home reading a book when Maggie knocks on his door. They haven’t seen each other or spoken since the last time he joined the Harts for dinner two weeks ago, haven’t been alone together since the last time she stopped by here, and while the dynamic between them has been good in Marty’s presence, they’re suddenly cautious, standing on either side of the entrance to Rust’s house. She offers him a hopeful, apologetic smile, and he lets her in without asking why she’s here.

He goes into the kitchen, sets his book down on the counter, and lights himself a cigarette. She stands across from him, giving him space, clasping her hands behind her like a shy schoolgirl trying to talk to her crush. Her hair’s down and her cheeks are rosy. She’s wearing a long-sleeved olive green blouse tucked into a floral print skirt that falls below her knees. Rust has always found her pretty, and part of him can’t understand why Marty would want to screw around with immature twenty-something’s who don’t even have half the class and intelligence Maggie’s got and aren’t as good-looking to boot.

“I came to apologize,” she says. “For the last time I was here.”

Rust looks at the tile floor, bowing his head, the cigarette hanging from his lips. He knows without hearing it from her that Marty mentioned his little remark about sex, to her. He’s not sure how he feels about her knowing that detail about him.

“I shouldn’t have come on to you,” Maggie continues. “Not without talking to you about it first.”

“You were doing a little of both,” says Rust, taking the cigarette from his mouth and holding it between his fingers with his arms spread and his hands against the edge of the counter. “We don’t have to talk about it. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I think I did. I made you uncomfortable. And I’m sorry. That’s the last thing I want you to be. Uncomfortable.”

Rust almost smiles. “Sorry to disappoint you but that’s all I’ve been for a hell of a long time.”

He glances up at her, sees her pursed lips and something in her eyes—compassion, maybe empathy.

“I meant what I said,” she tells him. “Marty and I are here for you. Not because we pity you but because we like you. We care about you.”

Rust drops his gaze again and smokes, unfamiliar with being liked and cared about and unsure how to react.

“We could use some guidance about how to show you. If—if you aren’t looking for sex, if you don’t want a girlfriend, I won’t try to push it on you anymore, but there must be something you do want. Something Marty and I can do for you.”

She’s taken a few steps toward him. Rust looks at her shoes: brown suede moccasins. 

“No, I don’t think there is,” he says, quiet and subdued.

“Rust,” says Maggie. “It’s okay.”

“I appreciate your intentions—but there’s nothing I want anyone can give me.”

She’s silent for a long beat. “You could spend more time with us. You’re always welcome in our home. Anytime. You don’t have to call.”

Rust just nods, still staring at the floor.

“Before I go, I just want to know one thing,” Maggie says. “Is there any kind of touch you want or that you’re comfortable with? There’s a lot of it that isn’t sex, but I don’t know where you draw the line..... I want to be clear.”

He hesitates, then finally looks up at her. He takes a drag on his cigarette to calm himself down. He’s thirty-seven years old, and he’s spent hardly any time thinking about how he likes to be touched. Nobody’s asked him until now. Marty’s the only person he’s ever told about disliking sex. Not even his ex-wife knew that.

“Kissing’s all right,” he says, his voice small and still quiet. “Everything up to that.”

Maggie nods, staring at him like she’s got nothing else to pay attention to.

Rust doesn’t know if he can say it out loud, but then the words come out. “I do like being touched, I just haven’t met anyone who wanted to without making it about sex, except my d—”

He chokes and shuts up, the wave of emotion taking him by surprise. He used to look forward to coming home from work all day, just so he could hold Sofia in his arms and pace around the nursery with her until she fell asleep.

Rust bites the inside of his lip and turns his back on Maggie, looking out the window above the kitchen sink.

A long silence hangs between them, until she says, “Is that something you want? From me? Or Marty?”

Rust remembers Marty’s hug and Maggie’s hand on his jaw, her kiss. Does he want those things? Does he dare want them? Does he dare want anything good anymore and risk having it snatched away again?

“I—I don’t know,” he whispers.

“Well. If you decide you do, please ask. I’ll talk to Marty. We can give you what you need, Rust. You just have to give us permission.”

Rust stares out the window into the bluish gray light of an overcast afternoon. He feels like he’s been drowning for so long that he resigned to his fate, and now someone’s thrown him a lifesaver. His desperate desire to grab hold of it surprises him.

Maggie turns around and starts making for the front door.

“Maggie,” he says, peering over his shoulder.

She stops.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she says.

Soon as he hears the door shut behind her, he takes a deep breath.

 

* * *

 

It’s a Saturday night, the air outside seductively mild in springtime’s short breath. The Hart children are at two different sleepovers, Maggie’s soaking in her bathtub, and Marty’s at a bar with Rust. They’re sitting side by side, backs to the room. Rust’s nursing a beer, and Marty’s got three empty shot glasses in front of him and a Long Island Ice Tea in his hand.

Marty, Maggie, and Rust went out to dinner together—burgers, fries, and pie at Mel’s Diner, nothing fancy—before the men split ways with the woman. Marty couldn’t help notice Rust smiling a lot as he sat across from the Harts in their booth, the other man’s body language relaxed, a lightness in his eyes and his voice. Maggie ordered a strawberry milkshake, and at one point, Rust reached out and casually swiped his finger through the whipped cream, licking it off with a lazy grin. Marty told him a story from his rodeo days, one that Maggie hadn’t heard in years, and Rust looked at him like the image of bull rider Marty Hart in chaps and a cowboy hat was just about the funniest thing in history. It felt like the three of them were high school kids hanging out. It was a good time, better than Marty’s had in a while.

“Who the hell were you, fifteen years ago?” he says to Rust. “I’m real curious. What was College Boy Rust Cohle like?”

Rust sips on his beer and doesn’t answer.

“Prolly just as full of yourself as you are now,” Marty guesses. “But not as depressed. At least, I hope not.”

“I was just a kid trying to find his place in the world,” says Rust.

Before he became a cop, before he met and married Claire, before the birth and death of his daughter, before he killed a tweaker in cold blood, before four years of deep undercover narco work, before drug addiction and his mental hospital stay—Rust in his early twenties was smart, hopeful, not happy go lucky but a far cry from pessimistic or miserable. He wouldn’t have been friends with a young Marty Hart, would’ve found him grating and obnoxious. It hits Rust that in a weird twist of luck, the horrors of his adult life so far and their influence on his personal evolution made him into a man more suited to Marty’s company.

“Christ,” Marty says, turning at the waist to look at him. “That almost sounds like humility! I can’t be that drunk.”

“You don’t have to tell me who you were in college,” says Rust. “I knew inside of a week, after we met.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“A jock.”

Marty snorts and takes a drink.

Rust slides his eyes over onto his face. “Mediocre student when you tried, borderline failure when you didn’t. Big on parties. Alcohol. Insatiable lust for pussy. Shit, I’m surprised no one saw fit to have you neutered.”

Marty lifts up his middle finger, sort of grinning despite himself. “You’re such a fucking asshole,” he says, not offended in the least. “I bet you graduated a virgin.”

“I wish,” says Rust. “All the sex I had in college was pretty bad.”

Marty shakes his head, still unable to completely believe that Rust dislikes God’s gift to mankind. He’s got a pretty good buzz going on now, and he’s going to have at least one more drink before they leave. He’s not the one driving.

“I’ll have you know,” Marty starts, “that the only girl I was seeing my last two years in college was Maggie Ann Hall. And no, I did not cheat on her. Could hardly see straight, I was so crazy for her back then.”

Rust thinks about that a moment, then says, “Sad how things change, isn’t it?”

Marty looks at him, tempted to be angry for a split second before catching Rust’s meaning. “I still love her.”

“Never said you didn’t.”

They’re quiet for a couple minutes.

“You don’t realize how long the rest of your life really is, when you’re twenty-something,” Marty says. “You make a promise to someone meant to last forever.... there’s plenty of time for you to screw it up.”

Rust pulls on his beer and says, “There are no happy endings, Marty.”

Marty swallows, facing the bar, his emotions scrambled. “There can be. Some people—”

Rust doesn’t try to argue. He knows he can’t talk Marty out of optimism any more than Marty can talk him into it.

An hour later, they’re both drunk, Marty worse than Rust. The bartender offers to call them a ride, but they decline, insisting they’re good to make it home. If Rust can make it on the highways for miles, hallucinating and high out of his mind, he can sure as hell make the ten minute trip to his house a little bit drunk.

He pulls the truck into his driveway, past the ass end of Marty’s car parked on the curb, and the two men wander inside. Rust pours them both a tall glass of ice water to sober them up some.

They’re standing in Rust’s kitchen, heavy on their feet, not even talking. He doesn’t know why, but all of a sudden, Rust wants a hug. He wants to close the space between him and Marty, between him and all other human beings. Intellectually, he knows that’s impossible, but like most people, he wants some temporary illusion of unity. Something to fill the bottomless void where his baby used to be, where everything good about him used to be.

“Marty,” he says, before he knows what’s doing.

There must be an edge to his voice, because Marty straightens up off the counter and turns around to look at him with concern in the creases of his brow.

“I—I need.... Will you....”

“What is it?” says Marty, looking more focused than before. “You okay?”

Rust reaches out and curls his fingers into Marty’s shirt. He closes his eyes and tries to center himself. He can taste his loneliness: White Shoulders perfume, Jim Beam whiskey, mashed bananas. He almost gags on it, swallows and tries to breathe.

“Rust?” Marty steps closer, in front of him now. He puts his hands on Rust’s shoulders. “Rust. Look at me.”

Rust opens his eyes and finds Marty looking at him. He’s still clutching his partner’s shirt. Breathing labored, his stomach in knots.

“Talk to me,” Marty says.

Rust clenches his jaw and takes a deeper, more deliberate breath. He shakes his head, as if to apologize or shrug off his experience like it’s nothing.

And somehow, Marty just knows. He pulls Rust to him, wraps both arms around the leaner man, and hugs him like he wants Rust to feel safe. Rust’s eyes flutter shut again, all the tension seeps out of his body, and he curls his arms up around Marty to lay his hands flat on the other man’s back. His cheek’s crushed against Marty’s neck, bottom half of his face tucked into Marty’s shoulder.

Marty’s warm, almost hot, and smells like aftershave and beer and Maggie washing his clothes. He feels solid and strong and destructible, like the house he lives in with his family and the life Rust used to have.

“You’re just drunk, ‘s all,” Marty murmurs.

Rust doesn’t want to talk, so he keeps quiet. He once told Marty that he tries to stay away from drinking because he used to have trouble with it; what he didn’t say is that trouble amounts to all his emotions getting away from him, pain so raw and penetrating it makes him miss those three slugs buried in his side. He didn’t tell Marty he used to sit in his daughter’s empty nursery and cry in the dark, too drunk to stand up; Claire would just leave him there, let him fall asleep on the carpet.

The two men stand there in the darkened kitchen for a long time, holding onto each other. Rust feels like he could fall asleep on his feet. He can feel himself sagging in Marty’s hug.

“You just need to sleep it off,” Marty says eventually, voice gentle and calm, like he’s trying to comfort one of his young daughters instead of a grown man.

He finally lets go of Rust and ushers him into the sparse living room, to the mattress on the floor. Rust sinks down onto the mattress without hesitation or protest, lying on his belly with his face in the pillow and his feet still in his shoes hanging off the end.

Marty sits next to him on one side of the bed and looks at him. “You’re some kind of mess, aren’t you?” he says.

Rust is too drunk, sleepy, and disoriented to argue with him about pity. He wants to tell Marty to call Maggie to pick him up or to call a cab home, but he doesn’t feel like he has the energy or the brain power to talk. He lies there expecting Marty to get up and walk out.

Instead, Marty starts to rub Rust’s back with one hand. He doesn’t stop until Rust’s dead asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Nothing special about a Wednesday night, but Marty comes out of the bathroom in his boxer briefs and cotton t-shirt and the sight of him hits Maggie in the pit of her stomach with hot pins and needles. Her breath catches in her lungs, and her heart clenches in her chest, no different than every time she saw him those first couple years they dated and screwed around in college. They haven’t had sex in three weeks, time slipping by unnoticed, both of them too distracted by the kids and work and Rust to complain about it.

Marty gets into his side of the bed and turns out the lamp on his night table, oblivious to that look in Maggie’s eye. He turns his head to smile at her and say good night, and she leans over to kiss him, her hand planted on his chest. She tastes his minty toothpaste on his breath. When she pulls back to look at him, their eyes meet, and she wants him as if that affair with the court reporter never happened, as if all the trouble they’ve had the last year and a half is in the distant past.

He looks at her in the dimness of the half-lit bedroom with pleasant surprise but not quite excitement.

“What?” she says. “You not in the mood?”

“I’m always in the mood,” says Marty, smiling. “It’s just, I wanted to talk to you.”

That immediately puts Maggie’s surge of desire on hold. Marty initiating meaningful conversation is still borderline miraculous in her book, and she knows there’s no talking to him after sex.

“What about?” she asks, lying on her side facing him, the lamplight behind her outlining her dark head like a halo.

Marty hesitates for a moment, watching her. “Have you had any second thoughts about our agreement? Giving each other permission to fool around?”

“Sure. Plenty of times. But I still think we’re better off with the option than we were without it.”

Marty sinks down onto his back, head on his pillow, and looks away from Maggie at the ceiling.

She watches him. “Is that all you’re bringing up?”

“No,” says Marty, eyes searching.

They’re quiet for a beat.

“What, Marty?” Maggie says.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Marty tells her. “I don’t know how to—what the right words are. ‘member you said something about friendship? Like, it could be something attached to family?”

She nods, impressed that he was listening that closely. “Yeah.”

“I’ve been trying to figure out what it is. I don’t know why, just something about what you said or the way you said it—and now all this time we’ve been spending with Rust. It’s been on my mind a lot. Friendship. I was thinking about all the buddies I’ve had through the years, school and the rodeo and the force. I thought I knew what friendship was, I thought I had it, like it was this simple, no big to do. Like, it was always the one uncomplicated thing, you know? Marriage and family and being a parent, that’s complicated. I took for granted, all these years, how easy it was to be friends with people.”

Maggie’s holding up her head in one hand, elbow on her pillow, looking at Marty with the kind of fascination she forgot she could feel toward her husband. “What are you getting at?”

Marty pauses, as if he’s working the thoughts around in his head. He looks at Maggie and says, “I don’t know if I’ve ever had the kind of friend who really matters. You know? The kind of friend that makes you feel something. Not just someone you like or someone you have fun with. But someone who’s part of you, the way your family’s part of you. That’s what you meant, isn’t it? When you told me there’s more to being Rust’s friend than dinner?”

Maggie feels her heart soften. She almost smiles, looking at Marty. This is the kind of man she’s been desperate to find in him: the kind who hears what she’s saying, who takes her seriously. A man who pays attention to his emotional life, not just his sex life.

“Yeah,” she says. “Something like that.”

Marty looks away from her again. “I don’t know, I don’t know what the hell I’m saying, I just.... I’m spending all this time with Rust, and he’s so fucked up, Mags. He really is. He does a good job keeping it together, all things considered, but he needs things..... I don’t know if we can give him what he needs. I don’t know if I can. He’s—God, he’s so fucking frustrating. Even when he’s not being an asshole. He’s—”

“Human. Rust is profoundly human. He’s not any different than the rest of us, Marty.”

Marty shakes his head. “Most people don’t have the issues he’s got.”

Maggie thinks about Rust’s daughter and ex-wife and the night, not so long ago, when he told her that he used to have trouble with drinking and drugs. He mentioned he’d spent some time in a mental hospital before his transfer to Louisiana, something to do with the job he’d had before that he didn’t want to talk about. None of it surprised her much. She’s had patients with the same haunted quality in their eyes and their faces. She’s noticed Rust looking a lot better since he started spending more time with Marty and her family, but she catches a glimpse of it once in a while still.

“Marty,” she says. “Is Rust making you feel something?”

Marty looks at her, head nestled in his pillow. He’s quiet.

“You don’t have to put up a front here. It’s just us.”

“He makes me feel a lot of things,” says Marty, eyes sliding away again.

“You can’t say that about any other guy you’ve been friendly with, have you?” says Maggie.

Marty pauses. “Guess not.”

“Is there something else on your mind?”

“I was hoping you had figured him out better than I have. Or at least what to do with him.”

Maggie shakes her head after several seconds. “I’m playing it by ear, just like you. You spend a lot more time with him, Marty. I’m sure you know him better than I do.”

“I don’t know how to be someone’s friend, Maggie. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. And I sure as hell don’t know how to handle Rust Cohle.”

“He’s getting better,” she says. “We must be doing something right.”

“Or he knows how to put on a show.”

Maggie grins a little. “Some of his pessimism’s rubbing off on you, huh?”

Marty frowns. “No. No. Of course, not. I am nothing like him, thank God. I just know he’s perfectly capable of behaving himself when he needs to, but on the inside, he’s still a morbid, fucked up asshole with a fucked up worldview.”

“And yet, you like him,” says Maggie, sitting up.

“So do you,” says Marty.

She hops onto Marty’s waist, straddling him with her knees in the mattress. She leans down to kiss him and says, “He’ll teach you how to be his friend. Don’t worry about it.”

They kiss for a few minutes, open-mouthed and eyes closed, her hands running down his chest and pushing up his t-shirt. She can feel him starting to get hard as he grabs her hips in his hands underneath her camisole. She’s already wet.

* * *

 

Rust’s drunk. Drunker than he was the first time he had dinner with the Harts. So drunk, he feels like he’s going to split clean open down his torso, every bad feeling in him gushing out with his blood and guts. He’s been hunched over the bar at some redneck dive for the last two hours, chain smoking, watching the crooked line of shot glasses fog up in front of him. He’s had a few beers too, bottles he could easily fling at someone’s face if given the opportunity.

Tonight feels like one of those times, right after Sofia died, when he would get wasted in bars like this one and not come home until midnight. He’d find Claire either asleep in their bed or smoking at the kitchen table with a glass of wine, looking over his cold plate of food across from hers like she left it out on purpose. At some point, she started spending more time at her mother’s or a hotel or fucking somebody else, who knows. Rust would step into an empty house, find a blank table under the one, lonely light. He’d stare into the refrigerator that had more booze in it than food and remember the jars of mashed banana and peas and apple that they used to keep in the door shelves. Depending on his emotional state, he would stop at the nursery door and just linger there for a few minutes, or he would go in and cry himself into unconsciousness.

He’s been trying to decide lately whether or not he should get clean. He’s been having a rough week—maybe because of the child murder he and Marty caught on Monday or maybe for no reason at all—and he almost drove out to see one of his dealers but decided against it. Ended up here instead. Now that he’s too drunk to drive, he figures he would’ve been better off getting high at home.

Rust dabs his cigarette butt into the ashtray at his arm and glimpses himself in the mirror partially hidden on the wall behind the bar. He checks his watch, but he’s too drunk to make sense of it. At this point, he’s going to have to sleep in his truck and hope for the best.

Rust slides off his stool and braces himself against the bar, as he sways on his feet. He leaves a wad of cash for the bartender and makes it to the men’s room somehow, feeling the alcohol slosh around in his empty stomach. He takes a piss in one of the urinals and washes his hands, looking at himself in the mirror and nearly resting his face against the cool glass. He feels like hell, knows he’s going to puke at some point in the next twelve hours and wake up with a killer headache. Maybe he’ll take off work, even though he’s done his job plenty fucked up before, too many times to count.

On his way out of the bathroom corridor, he knocks against another man’s shoulder. Doesn’t mumble an apology until after the guy turns around says a little too loud and aggressive, “Watch where the fuck you’re going, asshole.”

* * *

 The phone wakes Marty and Maggie up. Marty reaches for it on his night table, barely conscious, answering after two rings.

“Hello?” he says, eyes still closed.

“Is this Marty?” says a young, female voice. “Marty Hart?”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“My name’s Lilah. You don’t know me, but your friend here told me to call you. He’s pretty drunk, and he got into a fight.”

“Who you talking about? What time’s it?”

“Pretty late. Almost two. His name’s Rust? Rust Cohle?”

Marty’s brain perks up. He rubs at his eyes and swings his legs over the side of the bed, throwing back his half of the comforter. “Where are you?” he says, voice stronger now but quiet.

“The Hot Tomcat. You know it?”

Marty almost sighs. “Yeah, I know it. Why am I talking to you instead of him?”

“Like I said, he’s pretty wasted. He’s not feeling too good. He wants you to come get him, if you can.”

Marty rubs his face with his free hand. He’d tell this girl to call Rust a cab or take him home herself, if not for feeling flattered that Rust thought to call on him for help. “All right, can you stay with him ‘til I get there?”

“Sure, I guess. How long’ll it take you?”

“I don’t know, twenty, twenty-five minutes?”

“Okay. We’ll be waiting for you outside.”

“See you soon,” says Marty and hangs up. He combs his fingers through his hair, whispering _Christ_ as he looks for shoes and a pair of jeans in the dark.

“Marty?” Maggie says, more asleep than not.

“Be back soon, honey. Rust needs a hand.”

* * *

 The parking lot’s near empty when Marty gets to the Hot Tomcat. He sees Rust’s truck and parks a couple spaces next to it, then gets out of the car and spots his partner with the girl Lilah. They’re sitting on the ground, Rust’s head between his knees and his arms criss-crossed over his head. Lilah—twenty-something years old with her red hair in one braid—smokes a cigarette next to him and meets Marty’s gaze as he approaches them. She stands up, as Marty reaches her and looks down at Rust with his hands on his hips.

“What happened?” he says.

“I don’t exactly know,” says Lilah. “There was a fight inside, and the bartender threw him out. I wanted to make sure he was okay, didn’t try driving himself home or nothing.”

“Rust?”

Rust doesn’t move or acknowledge Marty’s existence.

Marty crouches in front of him. “Rust. Hey.” He taps the other’s man’s leg. “Come on. Gotta be at work in like five hours, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to go home to my bed.”

Rust finally drops his arms and lifts his head. His face is bruised, red, and swollen, his mouth bloody in the left corner and in the middle of his bottom lip. His eyes are unfocused, even as he tries looking at Marty right in front of him.

Marty just shakes his head.

“You came?” Rust says.

“No shit,” says Marty. He stands up again, and Lilah offers him Rust’s keys. Marty pockets them and nods. “You got a safe ride out of here?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she says. “I drove myself, and I’m pretty much sober, so.”

“Well, thank you for calling me and staying with him. I appreciate it.”

She smiles and says, “No problem.”

Marty watches her walk across the parking lot and get into a little Volkswagen Beetle. He turns his attention to Rust and leans over to haul the younger man up on his feet, arms tucked under Rust’s. His partner leans heavy against him all the way to the car, and Marty tucks him into the passenger seat.

The first thing Rust says once Marty’s in the driver’s seat is, “’m sorry, Marty.”

Marty turns the key in the ignition. “I’m just glad I didn’t get a different call, notifying me of my stupid partner dying in a drunk driving accident.”

They don’t speak on the way to the Hart house. Marty believes Rust’s passed out, but as soon as he parks the car in the driveway, Rust straightens in his seat and says, “What are we doing here?”

“This is where I live,” says Marty.

“I shouldn’t stay here. Maggie and the kids....”

“Are asleep and won’t give a shit. I’m not leaving you alone when you’re too shitfaced to walk. You might die on accident or something.”

For some reason, Marty doesn’t even think to put Rust on the living room sofa. He takes him straight to the master bedroom, where Maggie’s awake with her lamp on. Marty shuts the door behind him, watching the concern surface on Maggie’s face.

Rust plops down on the chair across from Marty’s side of the bed, breathing heavy with his eyes closed. Marty kneels in front of him and loosens the knot in Rust’s tie, unbuttons Rust’s shirt, and Rust takes it off, dropping it and the tie on the carpet. He’s wearing a white undershirt.

Marty stops and waits for Rust to finish undressing, but Rust just sits there with his eyes shut, his mouth pursed and his face tight. It looks like he’s in pain, and Marty wonders if he got more hurt in that fight than he’s letting on. From what Marty can tell, there’s no damage to Rust’s body, just his face, but he could be wrong.

“Rust?” Maggie says, her voice gentle in the silent house.

Rust cracks his eyes open, stands up, and goes into the bathroom, closing the door.

Marty and Maggie hear him throwing up not a minute later. It goes on for a little bit, and they wait for it to stop, assuming he doesn’t want them to hover. Marty looks over his shoulder at Maggie, sitting on the floor, and says, “He’s drunk. Got into a fight at some hole in the wall bar. He asked somebody to call me to pick him up.”

Maggie looks past her husband at the bathroom door. “Did something happen to him recently?”

“Not that I know of. I’m telling you, Maggie, the man’s got issues.”

They hear the sink running, after a quiet pause.

Rust appears and leans against the bathroom doorjamb, looking miserable and disoriented. His eyes are unfocused. He doesn’t look at Marty or Maggie directly.

She gets out of bed and approaches him, laying her hand on his forehead like he’s a child and she’s checking him for fever. He’s warm and clammy. She can smell the alcohol and cigarette smoke on his skin and his breath and his clothes. She presses two fingers to the side of his neck, taking his pulse—an instinct she can’t explain. It’s normal.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Rust mumbles, sounding less than fully conscious. “’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Maggie says. “You’re always welcome here.”

She sits him down on the foot of the bed. Marty’s on his feet again, watching them.

“I’m going to bring him some water,” she tells him, on her way out of the bedroom.

Rust leans forward with his elbows on his knees and buries his face in both hands. Marty sits next to him on his right, pressed against him, and lays a hand on Rust’s back. He starts rubbing it a little, up and down.

Maggie comes back with a glass of water and sits on Rust’s left, passing it to him. He drinks without protest and gives the glass back to her empty.

“Rust,” she says. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He hesitates, then shakes his head.

“You mind if I look you over, just to make sure you’re okay?”

Again, he pauses, then croaks out, “Go ahead. I’m fine.”

Maggie puts the glass on her night table and gets on her knees at Rust’s feet with one of her nurse’s flashlights. She checks his pupils first, then lifts up his undershirt and presses her fingers into his flesh in several places. Belly, ribs, sides. He’s not bruised, and nothing feels broken.

“That hurt?” she says.

He shakes his head, but then again, he’s drunk and male. She’s also sure he’s got a high tolerance for pain. He could be lying, but there’s no visible sign of damage, so she decides to leave him be.

Maggie meets Marty’s gaze, and he says, “How do you want to do this?”

She glances at Rust, then back at Marty. “He can stay here with us? If you’re okay with that.”

Marty looks at Rust, who’s got his eyes closed again and seems to be focused on breathing or maybe just not passing out where he sits. Marty nods.

They take off his shoes, belt, and pants, and he lets them only because he’s too far gone to fight kindness and too ashamed to be an asshole. They lay him down in their bed, right in the middle, and he rolls onto his left side like he instinctively knows that’s the only way they’ll have enough room. Marty lies down behind him, and Maggie gets in on the other side of the bed, turning out her lamp. It’s past three o’clock now, the darkest hour of night.

The three of them are silent and still for a few minutes, snug in a row. Maggie tries to go to sleep on her back, arm resting along the edge of the mattress. Marty’s on his side, back to back with Rust, trying too.

She feels it first: Rust trembling. She doesn’t need more than a couple minutes to figure out that he’s crying, soundless and barely breathing. She turns toward him onto her side and can almost feel the heat and moisture coming off his face. She’s inches away from him, but can’t see him in the dark.

“Rust?” she says, unsure what to do. “What’s wrong?”

He sniffs but doesn’t speak.

Maggie hears Marty rustle on the other side of the bed, rolling over to pay attention. She rests her hand on Rust’s hard, sinewy shoulder.

“What’s wrong?” she whispers. “You can tell me. It’s okay.”

Rust sniffles again, sucks in a breath. After a long time, he says, “I miss Sofia.”

The sound of his voice, raw and strangled, guts Maggie. She moves in close to Rust and wraps her arm around his shoulders, hand cradling his head. He curls his arm around her waist and clutches her, crying into her chest and the curve of her neck. Shaking.

Maggie can’t see her husband, but after a few minutes, she can feel him tucking in behind Rust, his arm stretching out to drape over Rust’s waist and Maggie’s. She doesn’t know how much time passes until Rust finally stops crying, but at some point, she feels his breathing begin to even out and his body relaxing.

* * *

 

The alarm clock goes off at six thirty. Marty shuts it off where it sits on his night table and rolls onto his back, his eyes still closed. The warm body pressed along his left arm and side doesn’t move. A few minutes pass, before Marty cracks his eyes open and turns his head to look at Rust.

If you would’ve told him six months ago that he’d have another man in his marriage bed—and not just any man but his weird, possibly mute, asshole partner—Marty would’ve slugged you.

But he lies there thinking about it for a little while and decides that he doesn’t mind, except for how cramped it is in a queen-sized bed with two men and a woman. That thought alone makes him wonder who the hell he is now.

Maggie shifts and stretches, parts of her sore from holding onto Rust in the same position for three hours. He’s dead asleep, but his arm’s still limp around her waist, his hand warm on her hip now as she lies next to him on her back. It’s been so long since she shared a bed with a man besides Marty, since she had a different man’s arm around her, and in her whole life, she’s never experienced it with a man she wasn’t fucking. It surprises her how nice it feels. She can’t think of one woman she knows who would believe her, but she’s not any more inclined to have sex with Rust now than she was before. Maybe it’s because she’s a monogamist at heart, maybe it’s because she knows Rust doesn’t like sex, or maybe it’s just because for the first time in her life, she’s friends with a man who actually appreciates her friendship. Whatever the reason, the hope that Rust sleeps with her and Marty again slips through her sleepy brain unchecked and unapologetic.

She forces herself to sit up and takes a minute to finally get on her feet. She finds Marty at least half-awake on his side of the bed when she heads for the door. “I’m going to make breakfast,” she murmurs, keeping her voice low. “You stay with him.”

Marty nods.

Maggie leaves the room, shutting the door behind her.

For a while, Marty just lies there next to Rust and stares at the ceiling, listens to the quiet of the house. His daughters are asleep; they’ll have to be coaxed out of bed by their mother and hurry to get ready for school. She’ll drop them off and start her shift at the hospital eventually, and Marty will either go to the CID office alone or call in with some bullshit excuse about coming late because of a family thing.

He doesn’t want to leave Rust alone. He could, in theory, drive his partner around as they try to actually work, but he doesn’t see the point in making Rust go anywhere when he’s still drunk and sick. Marty’s sure that Rust has worked in states significantly worse than the one he’s in now, but it makes no difference. Marty won’t be someone who endorses Rust’s self-abuse.

Maggie comes back in with coffee, just one mug. She sets on Marty’s night table, and the smell of it dissolves whatever sleepiness was still clinging onto him. She glances at Rust, who hasn’t stirred at all.

“You going to work?” she asks Marty.

“Maybe, eventually,” says Marty. “I’m going to call him in sick and play it by ear. When’s your shift?”

“Nine to five. The girls carpool to dance after school. I’ll pick them up on my way home.”

Marty’s looking up at her. “What do we do with him?”

She shrugs one shoulder. “You make sure he takes it easy and sobers up. I’ll make a plate for him, in case he wants to eat later. We’ll have to see what he wants to do..... I don’t like the idea of him alone in his house tonight.”

“Me neither,” says Marty and looks in Rust’s direction.

Maggie leans down and presses a kiss to Marty’s forehead. “Thank you,” she says. “For being good to him.”

He’s too surprised to smile at her, watching as she slides back out of the room. Once she’s gone, Marty sits up and takes a look at the digital clock: 7:09. 

He sips on his coffee. Just the way he likes it: hot, black, one sugar.

Rust sucks in a breath and jerks awake without warning, like maybe he was having a bad dream his brain needed to snap out of. His arms flail, and he whacks Marty, looking around the room like he has no idea where he is. 

“Hey, hey, hey,” Marty says, getting out bed and standing back because he knows well enough to be cautious around the other man when he’s intoxicated, scared, and disoriented. “Rust. Calm down. You’re okay.”

Rust’s eyes track across the bedroom, wide and startled, as he half-sits up in the middle of the bed. That curl of hair at the front of his scalp droops over his forehead. His expression’s another one Marty’s unused to seeing: like Rust Cohle showing up where Crash is supposed to be, in the middle of some terrifying, violent, and gruesome scene. Or in the middle of a bad drug trip, when he’s got no one with him who gives a shit and has to ride it out alone. The Rust Cohle who maybe existed before his daughter’s death and his broke down marriage and four odd years of undercover narco work, complete with drug-induced brain damage and a million bad choices, obliterated him like an atomic bomb. Rust before he started reading that philosophy shit.

“Where am I?” Rust says, tongue too slow with the words. “What did I do?”

“You’re in my bedroom,” says Marty. “At my house. I picked you up at the bar, remember? You’ve been asleep about four hours. You were drunk as shit, so you probably still are.”

Rust doesn’t reply, as he settles down, looking around the room like it’s not real. Like maybe he’s hallucinating the whole thing. “What time is it?” he says.

“After seven. And forget about going to work, because you’re in no condition. I’m going to call you in sick and make something up about taking a half day for the kids. You sober up later, maybe we can hunt down what’s-her-name in Kinder.”

“Alice,” Rust croaks. “Willoughby. Alice Willoughby, the babysitter.”

“Yeah, her. Now, why don’t you lie back down and get some more sleep. I’ll be here whenever you wake up.”

“Was Maggie—?”

“Yeah, she’s here. We’ve both been here the whole time.”

Rust collapses on the bed, head in the imprint of his pillow, and shuts his eyes. He looks ashamed.

Marty steps up to the side of the bed and says, “Hey. You don’t gotta feel bad, all right? It’s fine. Neither one of us wanted you anywhere else.”

“This is so fucked,” Rust says.

“No, Rust, it’s not. It’s friends helping you out. Just be grateful and accept it.”

Rust’s quiet for a moment. “I’m grateful.”

“You gonna freak out if I get back in with you for a while?”

Rust doesn’t answer right away. He shakes his head, without looking at Marty.

Marty slips back under the comforter, sitting up with his pillow between his back and the headboard. He drinks his coffee in silence, listening for the sound of his children or his wife’s voice. He doesn’t hear anything.

Setting the half-empty mug on the night table, Marty says, “If you want to get wrecked on a weeknight, that is your business. I’m not going to pretend I haven’t done it before myself, albeit in a hell of a lot better mood. But if something’s wrong with you, you need to tell me. You’re my partner. And you ain’t going home to someone else and telling them.”

“There’s always something wrong, Marty,” says Rust, sounding worn out and resigned. “You want a guy who’s got himself together, you better ask Quesada to kick my ass out.”

Even if Rust pulled this shit every week, Marty wouldn’t do that. He doesn’t want to imagine where Rust would end up if he left the job and disconnected from Marty and Maggie now. Besides, as ridiculous as it is, Marty likes him too much to let go.

He drinks more coffee, then says, “Just talk to me. Would you? At least let me know when you feel like shit, so I can invite you over.”

“I’m not your God damn charity project,” Rust says, his voice flat. “I’m not your brother, I’m not fucking your wife, I’m just the guy you work with, and I got no business bringing my personal bullshit around your kids.”

“We’re not trying to help you out of pity, damn it. We care about you. I care about you. I’m asking you to let me.”

Rust doesn’t say anything at all, lying on his side with his back to Marty.

Marty feels stupid for a minute, leaning toward embarrassment. What the hell’s he doing in bed with a man, anyway? What the hell’s he doing letting his wife get so close to his partner, and what’s he doing having these kind of talks, doing this kind of shit for Rust Cohle?

Then, Marty gets off that train of thought. There’s no one here to judge him, and the way he was living before wasn’t doing anyone good. If he can fuck around on his wife shamelessly and count that part of his private life, he can sure as hell cozy up to Rust and pretend like he’s not that kind of guy to the rest of the world.

Marty slides down into the bed and rolls over toward Rust, hooking his arm around the leaner man’s waist. He feels Rust tense up just for a few seconds but neither one of them pulls away.

“What’re you doing?” Rust says.

“You’re hurtin,” says Marty.

Rust doesn’t argue with that.   

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

A month after that first time Rust sleeps in the Harts’ bed, he and Marty are working a lead outside of Jennings. They’re investigating the murder of a white man in his thirties who was stabbed in the throat and dumped in Lake Arthur, undiscovered for at least a month. His ex-wife’s brother lives in a little rundown house with his family, in a residential cluster past the borders of town. The ex-wife divorced the victim four years back and hasn’t been heard from in three, but Marty won’t rule her out without solid reason. Rust just wants more insight into the dead man.

It’s routine, until the tail end of the interview, when the brother-in-law leads them back out of the house through the front door. One of his girls is sitting in the overgrown lawn. She’s about five. Wispy brown hair, overalls and pink sneakers. She isn’t wearing a shirt in the sweltering heat, bare arms tanned. Rust stops in the narrow driveway as Marty and the girl’s father have last words and looks at her. She looks up at him, doe-eyed and quiet. She has chocolate cake smeared around her mouth. There’s an older model mint green tricycle tipped over on its side, a few toddler paces away from her.

Rust doesn’t see it coming. He turns around and starts moving down the sidewalk past Marty’s car, knowing on instinct that he needs to get as far away from the girl and the tricycle as possible—but he only makes it about three car lengths before he sinks to his knees, dropping the ledger on the ground, bracing his hands on the hot concrete. He can’t breathe. He’s gasping and his chest hurts with a blunt pain. He doesn’t need to check his pulse, he can feel his heart racing. Sweat breaks out across his face. He stares at the pavement beneath him, and the moment feels surreal. His vision’s fuzzy around the edges. Everything goes real quiet, as if he’s under water.

Then, he hears Marty.

“Jesus Christ! Rust? Rust! What the fuck? What’s going on?”

But Rust can’t speak. He thinks he might pass out. His elbows feel weak, locked under his own weight.

“What’s wrong?” Marty says, crouching next to him. “Fucking talk to me, Rust! Talk to me, or I’m calling a fucking ambulance.”

Rust tries to breathe, but his lungs won’t open. The pain in his chest burns, and for a split second, he wonders if he’s having a heart attack. He finds Marty’s cheap leather shoe with his eyes, then Marty’s knee with his hand. The contact anchors him, calms him down a little. He’s scared but he’s beginning to think he’ll be okay.

“Yeah, I’m here,” says Marty, sounding slightly less panicked. “I’m here. What the fuck’s happening to you?”

Someone else, maybe the little girl’s dad, mumbles in the background.

“No, not yet. Just give him a minute.”

Good, Rust thinks. He doesn’t want an ambulance.

He coughs, sucks in a bit of air, but he’s still not breathing enough. Light-headed now. Afraid to pass out. His chest still hurts. He’s so fucking glad that he’s not alone and hates himself for it.

“Jesus, you’re shaking,” Marty says, and Rust feels the weight of his hand flat on his back all of a sudden.

Crash used to lash out at anyone who touched him during a bad trip, anyone who touched him without permission—man or woman—for any reason. He was like a wild animal caught in a metal trap, ferocious in his pain and fear.

But Rust starts to calm down with Marty touching him and him touching back. It occurs to Rust that he must be having a panic attack. He’d heard about them at North Shore but never experienced one until now.

He sits back on his ass finally and gets his feet on the ground in front of him, head between his bent knees. Marty takes his hand away but a second later, something cold and wet’s pressed to the back of Rust’s neck instead. It feels good, sends a wave of relief through his body.

“Breathe,” Marty says. “Just breathe, nice and slow.”

Rust tries.

“You’re all right.”

The anxiety and fear start to dissipate, but other emotions well up in him to take their place. Indescribable. His own trembling registers now. He’s weak and hot and sweaty, and to his absolute horror, he feels like he might start to cry any minute.

Marty takes the cold away from his neck and says, “Hey. Come on and drink this, okay?”

Rust lifts his head and sees him offering a glass of water. Marty’s sitting next to him on the sidewalk, a small bag of frozen peas and carrots on his thigh. Rust takes the glass and drinks a few swallows of water, thankful he can get it down. He feels better but still bad. Vulnerable. He wants to get out of here, get out of the sun, hole up away from people until he’s even again.

“Fuck, man,” Marty says.

Rust’s breathing hard through his nose now. He wants to tell Marty to get him the hell out of here. But he doesn’t trust himself to talk yet.

Marty gives the frozen vegetables back to the girl’s father and thanks him, telling him Rust just needs some space. The guy retreats to his house, leaving the detectives alone, and Rust appreciates the fact that Marty knows what he needs in situations like this one.

He drinks the rest of the water and drops his head between his knees again.

Marty starts massaging the back of his neck, and Rust almost bursts into tears right then.

“I don’t know what the fuck that was, but I think you’re okay,” says Marty. “Soon as you can make it to the car, I’m getting you the fuck out of here.”

Rust doesn’t speak or move for a while, hanging his head because he’s embarrassed and afraid he might cry. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him or why he’s freaking out for no reason when he’s sober.

Marty quits rubbing his neck and slides his hand down Rust’s back, resting it somewhere in the middle. “You ready?”

Rust looks up, still shaking all over, and nods.

Marty helps him up onto his feet and ushers him to the car by the elbow, Rust’s ledger book in his other hand. He sticks Rust in the passenger seat and waves at the interviewee lingering behind the screen door with one of his older girls.

Fifteen minutes on the I-10 eastbound, Rust says, “Pull over.”

Marty takes the exit to Egan, one more impoverished small town of no more than a few hundred people. He parks the car in a grassy area next to the main road leading into Egan, just off the highway exit ramp.

Rust gets out and walks several paces into the empty lot. He stops, his back to Marty, and looks into the distance at the blue sky streaked with thin, white clouds. He drops into a squat and covers his face in both hands as the tears break against him like a wave against the rocks.

A few minutes pass before Marty finally comes up behind him, careful and unsure. He doesn’t say anything, probably because he has no idea what’s wrong with Rust or how to handle a man in this kind of distress. That’s fine. Silent presence beats useless talk.

Rust doesn’t know how long it’s been since he cried in front of someone else. Years. Maybe not since he lost Sofia, and he and Claire had their period of leaning on each other through the storm of grief. He’s pretty sure he cried that night he was in bed with Marty and Maggie, but doing it in the dark when he’s drunk is one thing. Doing it in broad daylight, when he’s sober, in front of Marty alone is something else.

The last thing he wants is to lose his partner’s respect, and damned if that’s exactly what he’s doing right here, for no good reason.

Marty steps closer to him and crouches down on Rust’s right. He hesitates, then slides his hand up onto Rust’s shoulder and grips it with a comforting firmness.

That just hurts more, makes Rust cry a little harder. He strangles a sob in his throat, strains it into a whimper and chokes anyway. What the fuck is Marty doing, being kind to him? What the fuck is Rust doing, losing his shit over someone else’s little girl and a tricycle that’s the wrong color?

“Hey,” Marty says, voice low and gentle. “You want—?”

And yeah, Rust wants it. Stands up, brings Marty with him, and wraps his arms around the other man. Crushes his face into Marty’s shoulder and cries, shaking and quiet. Marty holds onto him and doesn’t try to tell him that it’s all right. Starts hushing when Rust does sob and whine. Strokes Rust’s back up and down. Rust clutches him like Marty’s the only thing that’s going to save him, hands clawing desperate at Marty’s shirt.

Who knows how long they stand there. Listening to the cars whirring above them on the highway. Not giving a damn if someone sees.

* * *

 

Marty’s out with Audrey and Macie for a father-daughter date night one Friday, a couple weeks after Rust’s panic attack, and Maggie invites Rust to spend the evening with her. She orders a pizza and makes a salad. He brings a bottle of red wine and a promise to himself that he’ll only have one glass.

They eat at the table with the radio on in the background, sitting in the same chairs they usually occupy when Marty and the girls are there. Rust doesn’t touch the wine until he’s almost finished with his last piece of pizza, after two glasses of water. Most of the meal, Maggie updates him on the girls, who don’t yet see Rust as anyone more important than all of their other parents’ friends and acquaintances they’ve met. He listens to her talk about them with an awareness of his own slow-growing sense of duty to Audrey and Macie, folding them into the mix of what few things are important, not quite paternal but interested in their well-being like a wolf invested in the survival of his pack. He can feel the dull ache in the pit of his heart too, no different than when he sees the girls in person, the still-raw loss and longing for Sofia. He doesn’t want to try having more kids of his own with anyone, but he’s starting to warm up to the idea of belonging to someone else’s family.

After they do the dishes—Rust washes and Maggie dries—she decides she wants an ice cream cone. Rust isn’t a big fan of sweets, but he offers to drive to the creamery she likes nearest the house. He pulls into one of the parking spaces right up at the storefront and watches her go in and order. She comes back with butter pecan in a waffle cone, and they sit there in the truck while she eats it.

“You got a favorite flavor?” she says.

Rust shakes his head. “Not really. Never cared for ice cream growing up. Too cold in Alaska to want it.”

“Marty’s is chocolate. One of our first dates, we shared a banana split at this diner just off campus. He asked if I’d let him have the chocolate scoop, and I did, in exchange for the cherry.”

Rust tries to picture a college-aged Marty trying to win Maggie’s affections, tries to imagine Maggie’s younger self falling for Marty. Even then, they must’ve been wired the way they are now: him with one eye on the American Dream and the other on every good-looking, available girl down for no strings sex; her, unwilling to settle for a bad man because of the mistaken belief that there’s such a thing as a good one. She might’ve been quick to fuck Marty, but she was slow to love him. Rust’s certain of that, looking at her now in the dimness of his truck.

“Can I ask you something personal?” he says.

“Of course,” says Maggie.

“What’d you ever see in him?”

“In Marty?”

“Yeah. How’d you end up Mrs. Hart with two kids, giving him a second chance?”

Maggie turns her head and stares through the windshield for a minute, holding the ice cream cone in her right hand. She’s smart and strong and knows what she wants. She was obviously ambitious enough in her youth to decide she wanted a career she could count on for independence, and God knows she must’ve been a knockout in her twenties. She could’ve had just about anyone for a husband. Could’ve waited for someone richer, smarter, better looking, and more inclined to moral decency than Marty. Not that Rust would want to be friends with that hypothetical guy.

“He was the first person I ever fell in love with,” says Maggie. “When we were young, before we got married and had the girls, it was easy. Almost perfect. As close to it as anyone can get, at least. That’s what I thought. He was everything I wanted at the time. He treated me with respect. He was a gentleman. He was just the right amount of romantic. And he was fun. Really fun. It was easy to have a good time with him. I really appreciated that when I was in nursing school. Afterward, too. The first few years we were married.”

She licks her ice cream and nibbles at the cone.

“I was sure he was a good man,” she continues. “I wouldn’t have married him otherwise. I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant if I had doubts about that. When I found out about the affair.... and for months before that, I wondered if I’d been wrong the whole time. If I just saw what I wanted to see because I was in love with him. You know? Or if he really did change without me noticing, until it was too late.”

“All love involves some amount of self-delusion,” says Rust, only realizing after he’s done saying it that it’s the kind of thing he usually reserves for Marty.

But Maggie doesn’t flinch. “He’s better,” she says. “Since he cut back on the drinking and we made that decision about.... being able to see other people. I think spending more time with you’s made the biggest difference, really.”

Rust scoffs and looks away through the windshield at the now closed creamery, dark inside.

“It’s true.”

“If you think I, of all people, can be a positive influence on someone, you don’t know me as well as you think,” he says.

“You have a poor self-image,” says Maggie. “Just because you believe it, doesn’t make it true.”

Rust doesn’t want to argue with that. Maybe because he can’t, exactly. Maybe because part of him hopes she’s right.

“He does love you,” says Rust, looking over at her. “And the girls.”

Maggie makes eye contact with him. “I know,” she says, after a moment. Softening her voice.

“You’re a better person than he is, Maggie.” Rust lights a cigarette. “That’s the truth. I suspect it always has been. Probably always will be. Maybe that means you should be with someone else, or maybe it means you’re his teacher.”

She doesn’t respond.

He smokes, and she finishes her ice cream cone.

“Can I ask you something?” she says, after they’re done.

“Shoot,” says Rust.

“What do you see in him?”

Rust looks at her, quiet. That’s something he’s never contemplated, in almost a year since he met Marty. Now that he realizes he’s never bothered to figure it out, he’s surprised at himself. Feels like Marty lulled him into a rare state of unquestioned emotion when Rust wasn’t paying attention. There’s never been a person in Rust’s life who he didn’t dissect for the purpose of determining why they mattered or deciding that they would. Except for his pop and Sofia—and he recognizes that biological programming was a big and irresistible factor in his unexamined love and attachment to them. He can’t say the same of Marty.

He’s been aware of Marty’s flaws all along, seeing more and more of them over time. Marty’s worse than some men Rust’s known and better than others. Law-abiding and good at the job, saving his biggest character flaws and fuck ups for his personal life. In many ways, he is better than Rust. In many ways, he’s worse.

Rust doesn’t judge from a moralistic standpoint, doesn’t use a person’s shortcomings to decide whether they’re categorically “good” or “bad” or if they’re someone he wants to know. At this point in his life, Rust’s a bad person in comparison to just about every member of polite society. He has more in common with the criminals he arrests than the other detectives in his unit.

Marty may be a cheating, lying son of a bitch. A failure in the husband department. An asshole to women. But Marty got through eight years in CID without ever firing his gun and felt bad about killing Reggie Ledoux minutes after he did it. He’s still capable of compassion, enough to get protective over some underage prost he just met and won’t ever see again.

Rust’s got more blood on his hands than Marty ever will, and he’s not even trying to be good anymore. The shit he did undercover would be enough to make people like Marty and Maggie Hart lock their children inside when Rust’s driving down the street, if they knew. And it isn’t just what he did—but his lack of remorse.

He still ain’t sorry for killing that meth head with the baby girl.

“He’s my partner,” Rust tells Maggie. As if that’s the only explanation there could ever be for making friends with a man, getting close, drawing him in.

As if Rust never had a partner before Marty.

* * *

 

On a Tuesday morning, Rust gets a confession out of Geraci and Howell’s suspect in an hour flat. The man came in once before for questioning but didn’t slip. He was the only real suspect based on evidence and logic, but there wasn’t enough material to charge him without some kind of admission on his part. Howell asked Rust for help, Rust agreed, and Geraci ignored the whole thing until Rust got the suspect in the box.

Rust and Marty are at their desks when Geraci and Howell come back to the squad room after booking their guy downstairs.

“Thanks again, Cohle,” Howell says, sitting down at his own desk.

Rust glances at him and gives the slightest nod.

“You should start chargin’ for your services,” Marty tells him. “Nobody treats you nice enough to ask favors.”

That gets a slight grin from Rust. He stands up, takes his jacket off the back of his chair, and says, “I’m going for a smoke.”

He swings his jacket on and heads for the exit. On his way, Geraci passes him and knocks hard into his shoulder.

“Watch where the fuck you’re going,” the bigger man says, a sour look on his face.

Rust stands cool where he is, watching Geraci go to his desk. “You can be ungrateful, Steve, or you can be an incompetent shitheel. Not both at the same time.”

Geraci scowls at him from his seat. “You arrogant fuck. You think you’re the only one here who can do his job?”

“If you could do yours, I wouldn’t’ve had to do it for you just now,” says Rust.

“Why don’t you do us all a favor and get shot, asshole?” Geraci says.

Rust smiles.

Marty knows he’s thinking about that night Crash took three slugs in the chest in Port Houston. Rust doesn’t seem offended by Geraci this time, but God help him, Marty is.

“Hey, fuck off, Steve,” he says. “You don’t say that shit to a cop.”

Geraci gets up and turns to look at him. “I’ll say whatever I damn well please, Marty. Since when do you stick up for Cohle, anyway? He suckin your dick when no one’s looking now?”

Marty doesn’t even know what he’s doing until he’s right up in Geraci’s space and punching him in the nose.

A couple guys slide in between Marty and Geraci and hold up their hands.

“Shit! What the fuck?” Geraci says, looking at the blood on his hand when he takes it away from his nose.

Marty’s aware of Rust holding onto his bicep with that firm grip of his that anybody else could underestimate. He’s hot and pissed and breathing like he’s just taken a break from a shouting match, chest heaving.

“Get a hold of yourself, partner,” Rust murmurs at Marty’s shoulder, voice low and steady—just like it was the night he broke up the confrontation between Marty and Maggie at the hospital. “He ain’t worth it, Marty. Let’s get out of here and work. All right?”

Marty breathes, still staring in Geraci’s direction and glimpsing him past Lutz and Demma. His rage feels a little less intense, and he knows that Quesada’s going to come out of his office in the next five minutes if he and Geraci don’t back off of each other.

“Come on,” Rust says, turning his body into Marty’s, to stand half in his way.

Marty breaks out of his grasp and starts stalking toward the squad room door, ignoring Geraci. He doesn’t wait for Rust, jogging downstairs and going out into the parking lot.

He huffs a few breaths. “Fuck!” he yells, alone in the crisp morning air. He kicks the rear driver’s side tire on his car and paces around until Rust shows up, carrying Marty’s suit jacket folded over one arm and his damn ledger tucked under the other.

Rust gets into the car without saying a word, and after a deep breath, Marty slides into the driver’s seat.

“We’re stopping for coffee,” he says, tone harsh and words clipped.

“Mm’kay,” says Rust, looking out his window as Marty pulls out of the parking lot and into the street.

“Fuck him.”

Rust doesn’t reply for a minute, then says, “Well, I learned something new about you. Predictably, you’re the kind of guy who’s deeply offended by insults to your heterosexuality.”

“That’s not why I’m fucking pissed, Rust.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“You don’t fucking wish a bullet on someone, and I’m sick and tired of him disrespecting you in front of everybody. I didn’t fucking punch him because I care about gay jokes; I punched him because he’s an asshole who’s insulting our partnership. Like I’d need an excuse to put him in his place when he says something fucked up to you. Like I’m not supposed to like you or give a shit.”

Rust’s quiet for a long time, until Marty pulls into the drive-thru line at a McDonald’s.

“I’ve never had someone defend my honor before,” he says. “’s real sweet, Marty.”

Marty looks over at him, at Rust’s deadpan face. “Fuck you,” he says, no longer angry.

“Thought we weren’t like that.”

Marty shoves him, and they both smile.

* * *

 

The three of them go out together on Friday night that week. Marty and Maggie don’t mention that it’s supposed to be their date night, don’t discuss with each other the subtle implications of what it means to ask Rust to join them, and Rust tries to ignore his own quiet sense of happiness at having something to do for fun on a weekend night that doesn’t involve some woman he’s never met.

They go to dinner at a Cajun restaurant right next to the Vermilion River, not far from the Petit Bayou east of US-90. Marty allows himself one tall beer, Maggie slowly nurses two mint juleps, and Rust drinks more whiskey than he planned on. By the time, they leave the restaurant to take a walk along the river, Rust and Maggie are both a little drunk and Marty’s loosened up. Rust lights a cigarette. The three of them walk side by side, Maggie in between the two men, and don’t speak for several minutes. They’re all feeling warm and happy under the starry black sky, breathing in the cool air of these last few weeks of summer.

Maggie’s smiling, in a better mood than she’s been in for a while. She hooks her arm around Rust’s elbow without warning, and he just glances over at her and hitches his arm up a little in hers. She’s holding Marty’s hand on her other side. They keep going a ways, then eventually turn around and head back.

Rust drove the three of them in his truck, but he’s a little too drunk not to let a more sober person drive instead. He hands Marty his keys when they reach the restaurant parking lot. Marty gets behind the wheel, Maggie squeezes into the middle of the bench seat, and Rust sits on her other side, looking out his window at the lights of the restaurant.

All of a sudden, she says, “Rust?”

“Yeah?” he says, turning his head toward her.

She kisses him. Lifts her hand to clutch at one side of his blazer. Both of them close their eyes. His right elbow’s still propped in the window of the passenger door, cigarette in the fingers of that hand.

Marty just looks over at them, lifts his eyebrows, and grins. Not even surprised by his lack of jealousy. “God bless,” he says, and starts the truck.

No one says anything on the ride back to the Hart residence, some country music station on the radio filling in their silence. Marty doesn’t wipe off that damn smirk the whole way. Who knew he’d be so amused at his monk of a partner finally getting a little sugar from his wife?

Rust, cheeks burning with some foreign emotion—like guilt or embarrassment, has every intention of going straight the fuck home as soon as Marty and Maggie get out of the truck in their driveway. But as usual, he’s shit out of luck.

They drag him inside, and he regrets drinking a single drop of alcohol because this can’t end well. No way Marty accepts it in the morning. No way Marty and Maggie don’t fight about this. No way Maggie doesn’t want to fuck him and no way he can say no without offending her. This is fucked. It’s so fucked, just like everything that’s ever happened to Rust, good or bad.

He’s going to apologize somehow, hands almost shaking, cigarette down to its last drags in his lips. Standing in their darkened living room, as Maggie sits on the sofa with a satisfied smile on her face and Marty pours himself a glass of water in the kitchen. He’s going to apologize or he’s going to leave without saying a word.

Then, Maggie says, “Rust, come sit.”

And he goes. He sits on her right, in the middle of the sofa, and he doesn’t know why. Maybe he thinks he’s going to straighten her out, draw a thick line in the sand with a rule about no kissing between them, make some half-assed argument about not needing her pity again even though he knows that’s not the reason she kissed him.

But Marty sits down next to him before he can figure out what he wants to say, and he’s swallowing his nerves. Needs to apologize, even though he was the passive party.

Marty takes a look at him and chuckles husky in the back of his throat, clapping Rust’s knee. “You need to calm down, before you have another whatever the fuck that was in Jennings. I ain’t mad. It’s fine. I told you it was months back, remember?”

Rust sucks on his cigarette and feels better, but part of him still wants to get as far away from the Harts as he can, right now before something else goes wrong.

Maggie slides her hand over Rust’s cheek and turns his head towards her. Rust closes his eyes again at her touch, something gentle and sweet like a ghost from the life he always wanted—the one his daughter could’ve given him. His rational mind, sluggish with whiskey, wants to resist this. Wants to run from everything the weaker parts of him longs for.

And he’s weak. Weaker than he ever lets on in front of the rest of the world. Weak in ways that scare him. Soft and lonely and full of desire, everything he wants to deny.

She kisses him again, and she tastes like magnolias and cold ocean water and mint. He sees green, the color of Spanish moss. Something warm blooms in his belly, and he’s gone. No more fight left in him.

Marty takes the cigarette out of Rust’s fingers and drops it in his empty water glass.

Maggie breaks the kiss and presses her lips to Rust’s cheek, still holding his face in her hand. She touches her forehead to his and whispers in his ear, “I’m so glad you came into our lives.”

Rust worries his pant leg just above his knee, tries to breathe through the overwhelming things he’s feeling, afraid of the powerful desire roaring through him to grab on to Maggie and Marty and never let go. He’s either going to pass out, burst into tears, or bolt from the room in a minute if he doesn’t get a hold of himself.

“Hey,” Marty says, in that gentle good ol’ boy voice of his, God damn him. His hand’s suddenly warm on the back of Rust’s neck, squeezing like Marty knows Rust’s pop used to do that when Rust was a boy—closest thing he ever got to a hug. “Fuckin’ breathe, man. Jesus.”

Rust swallows, breathes, and says, “Marty.”

“What?”

Rust turns to look at Marty, but his mouth gets away from him, finding Marty’s in the dark like a magnet. Marty just sits there. Rust’s the one who backs off.

“Fuck,” he says, breathless with horror. “Christ, Marty, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Marty blinks at him, looking a little dazed.

Rust starts to get up from the couch, but Marty pushes him back down with a big hand planted on Rust’s chest. Rust sits there, frozen, flushed with shame. Sure he’s about to get chewed up and thrown out.

They’re all quiet for a couple minutes, the silence and the air heavy and thick in the room.

Marty looks at Maggie, and she looks back at him. Something passes between them.

Marty shifts his eyes onto Rust, who’s hanging his head and slumping forward like he’s a kid expecting to get thrashed. “Let’s try that again,” he says.

Rust starts to look up at him but doesn’t have time to process the suggestion, before Marty’s leaning in to press his lips to Rust’s. It’s a gentle kiss. Rust can feel how much Marty cares about him in it. Soon as Marty ends the kiss, he starts a new one, pressing a little more this time. Still dry and closed.

Rust’s never kissed a man before, and he knows Marty hasn’t either, without needing to be told. He can sense, even in his drunken state, that this isn’t about sex or romance any more than it is with Maggie. Maybe Marty’s okay with this because he knows Rust doesn’t want those things from him. Maybe Marty’s not thinking anything at all.

Maggie starts kissing Rust’s neck, soft little puckered kisses up and down the curve, her hand on his belly.

And then Marty’s opening his mouth a little and Rust goes along and their kissing deepens. It tastes like strong, black coffee and smells like wood smoke in the wintertime. Feels comfortable, like an old baseball glove. Feels like it fits him. And Rust sees the earthy brown of saddle leather.

Marty stops kissing him and rests his forehead against Rust’s, just like Maggie did. They sit there breathing a minute, eyes closed. She’s got her head on Rust’s shoulder.

“God damn,” Marty says, like he just got an answer to some big, important question.

Rust realizes how fast his heartbeat is. He finds Maggie’s hand on his belly and clasps it, like it might calm him down. He lifts his head away from Marty’s, and they look at each other.

“I’m going home,” Rust says.

“The hell you are,” says Marty.

“I really need to go home, Marty. I need some space.”

Marty tries searching his eyes, frowning a little bit. “Fine. But I’m driving you. ‘ll come get you in the morning, so you can get your truck.”

Rust turns toward Maggie, who straightens up off his shoulder, their hands still entangled.

“You sure you don’t want to stay?” she says.

Rust presses a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” he says.

* * *

 

Marty drives Rust home in his car, the car they spend so much time in together on the job, and they don’t talk the fifteen minutes there. When he pulls up alongside the curb in front of Rust’s house, Rust lingers a minute, unsure what to say or if he should say anything at all.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” Marty tells him.

The sound of his voice reminds Rust that Marty’s sober. Rust could blame his half of their kiss on drinking if he wants, but Marty can’t.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” says Rust and gets out of the car.

Marty doesn’t drive away until after Rust goes inside.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ever find a song that is unbearably perfect for two characters' kissing? 
> 
> In this fic, that would be W.A.S.P.'s "Sleeping (In the Fire)." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-T5duLImqg

Rust’s at the office early on Monday morning, wound tight like his old normal those first six months on the job. His right knee bounces under his desk, as he sips his second cup of coffee and pretends to review his notes on the case he and Marty caught last week. His sketchbook lies open in front of him like a gutted fish, his neat handwriting and doodles incomprehensible to anyone but him.

He did go back to the Harts on Saturday, like a dog aware of its own pathetic addiction to positive attention—self-conscious, embarrassed, needy. Rust’s whole body clenches up in revulsion at that last one. He hates neediness. Scorns it in other people. Denies it in himself, like the most God-forsaken drug addict.

After he lost Sofia and Claire, Rust became a man stripped down to his most basic function: survival. He tried everything he could to divorce himself from his body, his emotions, whatever created the illusion that human beings are any different or more sophisticated than every other beast. He had nothing left to lose and nothing left to live for, and he was hellbent on getting himself killed. He lost himself in a fake identity, in some other man’s desires and motivations, and that was a lot like death.

But in retrospect, Rust recognizes that his efforts to transcend the body and feelings that fooled him into thinking he was a person, to shed everything material and surrender to the destructive force of the universe, just sucked him deeper into physicality. Enough drugs and alcohol to kill anyone except the guy with a death wish, sex that made his stomach churn, levels of violence so horrifying that it would scar any man who was more good than bad or else transform him: all of it amounted to Rust still alive, his pain not numbed so much as drained like pus from an unhealed wound over and over again. Three bullets in his chest, and he still wouldn’t fucking die. But waking up in Houston General to find himself alive wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was the silent, unbearable, stupid loneliness he felt when he lay there for weeks with no visitors except his ex-handler and realized that there truly was no one left in the world who cared where he was or if he lived or died.

The idea of a friend, let alone a pair of friends, was so far from his imagination in those days that he could not have believed he’d have one just a year later. He thought he’d gotten past this kind of weakness, thought he’d become someone capable of moving through the world on the legs of his work alone, thought he’d made peace with himself as a functional machine existing only to serve some higher purpose until he is no longer necessary. But apparently the five years leading up to the day he became Marty Hart’s partner made no lasting impression on Rust’s emotional self. He likes having dinner with the Hart family and he likes the way Maggie listens to him when he gets personal and he likes that Marty does find him funny sometimes and sticks up for him at work just as much as he bitches about Rust when they’re alone together. He likes knowing that if he ends up in the hospital again, Marty and Maggie will show up.

Intellectually, Rust knows they’re better off without him, and he’s running the risk of taking another loss that he’s not equipped to handle. But he went back on Saturday anyway and had brunch in the Hart kitchen. Maggie made chocolate chip pancakes and sausage, and he cleared his plate, listening to Marty chat with the girls and pretending that the night before never happened. When Marty asked him if he wanted to stay the afternoon and help clean out the garage, Rust turned him down. “I got things I gotta do,” he said. “I’ll see you Monday.”

He spent the rest of the weekend getting high and brooding in his living room. Mixed in with memories of real life horror and drug-induced visions of color and light, there was a woman’s white throat, a man’s open hands—jarring Rust from sleep.

“Mornin’,” Marty says, like he’s surprised to find Rust sitting there at his desk. He’s sipping coffee from the mug he keeps in the break room. He sets the mug down on his own desk and takes off his blazer, draping it on the back of his chair.

Rust briefly wonders if Marty’s going to ask why he didn’t call or stop by again after Saturday brunch, then says, “I want to be on the road to Morgan as soon as debriefing’s over.”

Marty nods as he sits down. “Okay.”

Rust flips his sketchbook closed and lights himself a cigarette, not looking at Marty but down toward the edge of his desk. He knows sooner or later, Friday night’s going to come up, but he wishes they could just ignore it and carry on the way they have been.

Forty-five silent minutes into the drive from Lafayette to Morgan City, Marty clears his throat a little and says, “Maggie and I talked about it. The kissing....”

“It won’t happen again,” Rust says, cutting in. He’s staring through the windshield, his face tight. “Friday was a mistake.”

“Now, hold on a minute. I was going to say that we had a long conversation and agreed that it was nice. I’m not trying to set up a date, for fuck’s sake, but I’m saying that we liked doing that with you. She doesn’t think it was a mistake. I don’t. We’re not making demands, but I’m not an idiot, Rust. I know you liked it.”

“Marty, whatever you do in your marriage is your God damn business, but I told you, I don’t want to get in the middle of it. I am not some woman you can fuck as a distraction and throw away when I start to inconvenience you. You and Maggie want to see other people, fine. I’m not other people. We work together.”

Marty scowls at him, glancing back and forth between Rust and the road. “That’s what you think this is? A distraction? You know what, fuck you, Rust. I’m working on my marriage. I’m busting my ass to be a better husband. I do not need you to clean up my mess. I’m trying to be your friend here. Jesus Christ, why the fuck does there have to be some ulterior motive for that?”

“Oh, is that what you’re doing?” Rust says. “Being my friend? You let all your friends kiss your wife? Huh? You lock lips with your buddies after one too many beers, on a regular basis?”

Marty grasps the steering wheel too tight, and for a moment, his face twists up, pink with rage and embarrassment. He has to resist the urge to slam on the brakes in the middle of the highway.

Then, the epiphany comes. He almost smiles, shaking his head.

“You’re such a fucking asshole,” he says, no longer angry. “You do this all the time: create some kinda bullshit that ain’t even there to cover up the fact that you’re scared.”

“I’m not scared of anything.”

“Look me in the eye right now and tell me you don’t like the kissing.”

“You are going to set your marriage and our partnership on fire and burn them to the fucking ground because you wouldn’t know a wise decision if it blew you,” says Rust. “My life does not revolve around you, Marty. This job is more important than you going through the next phase of your mid-life crisis.”

“Quit trying to piss me off, and admit that you are scared shitless by the idea of actually having people in your life who give a shit,” Marty says.

Rust doesn’t answer.

“Yeah, see? I’m right. You’re running away, and it ain’t got nothing to do with morals or the job or gettin’ used. You know Maggie and I have good intentions, and you’re scared.”

“I am not scared,” says Rust, sounding calm and quiet as always. “You’re a moron.”

Marty’s silent for a few minutes, looking over at Rust periodically, right hand perched at the top of the steering wheel. “If you can look me in the eye like a man and tell me, with a straight face, that you’re happy just to shake hands and be casual, then I’ll drop it. Maggie, too.”

Rust purses his lips, staring at a spot on the dashboard and clenching his jaw. He turns his head to look at Marty, and he’s going to tell him. He’s going to lie. _Do it, Cohle. Don’t be stupid, God damn it._

Marty meets his gaze, waiting.

Rust looks into the other man’s eyes, then away at the road again.

Marty smirks.

Minutes pass in silence.

“There are fuckin’ rules,” Rust says.

“Let’s hear em,” says Marty.

“No one sees us do anything that they wouldn’t expect from a married couple and their friend.”

“No shit, Rust.”

“You don’t talk about me. Maggie doesn’t talk about me. To anyone. Either one of you starts using me as a pawn between you, I’m gone. Kissing is where I draw the line, with both of you. No one touches me below the belt, and I don’t go there on you either. That’s non-negotiable.”

“We already know you don’t like fucking. What else?”

Rust cannot believe he’s going along with this. Apparently, he’s not done making bad decisions. “I say no, you respect that. First time. And neither one of you tries to fix me.”

“I know a lost cause when I see one,” says Marty.

“You and Maggie stay out of my business unless I take you into it,” Rust says.

“I sign on the dotted line. I’ll pass this along to her, unless you want to call her up and tell her yourself.”

“Don’t ever fucking bullshit me, Martin. Maggie gave you a second chance. I won’t.”

“I’m surprised you think I could bullshit you, Rust.”

They make it to Morgan City, and they’re no different with each other than they were before Dora Lange, the rest of the day.

* * *

 Audrey turns eleven at the end of September, as the last of summertime humidity melts away from Louisiana and leaves only the crisp air of autumn. Marty and Maggie throw her a party at the house: eight of Audrey’s girl friends, Macie, and Macie’s best friend hula hooping in the backyard, putting on make-up and painting their nails in the girls’ bedroom, singing along to Audrey’s pop CDs, a couple of VHS tapes on hold for after dinner.

Marty invited Rust just to save him from having to suffer through the evening the only man there, and Rust agreed to stop by only because he knew that Marty would never ask any of the other guys to come to his daughter’s birthday party. He drives to the house with his stomach knotted up because this is one of those things he’s never had to face, in the years since Sofia’s death. He’s afraid of being triggered, of having another fucking panic attack and scaring the kids, ruining the whole thing for everybody.

He pulls his truck into the driveway, alongside Marty’s car, kills the engine and sits there for a minute. Bracing himself. Rubs his hands on his thighs as he walks stiff to the welcome mat. He’s wearing a long-sleeved plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled down to hide his tattoo—as if it isn’t something children oughta see. He’s got his gift clutched in one hand, like a justification for his presence: a book wrapped neat and tight, no ribbon or bow or card.

Maggie answers the door smiling, expecting him. Her cheeks are rosy and her eyes bright. “Hey,” she says, voice happy and soft.

“Hey,” he says.

She lets him in and shuts the door behind him. “Marty’s waiting for you out back. Can I get you something to drink?”

Rust can hear the high-pitched girl voices punctuated by the occasional laugh or shriek, as he follows Maggie toward the kitchen. No sign of the event so far except a small pile of gifts on the dining table, the bags and wrapping paper bright and shiny and adorned with pink ribbons and glitter and HAPPY BIRTHDAY! in bubble letters. A tall round cake waits under a glass dome on a serving platter on the kitchen island, and it must be homemade because there isn’t a message across the top, just smooth, pale pink frosting.

“Water’s fine,” he says, quiet.

Sofia would be nine in a few months. Rust can’t fathom it: her, a girl old enough to hold long conversations with him, old enough to have dreams and opinions and favorite books, old enough to think of him in detail instead of unconditional love. His daughter with crushes and friends and grades and hobbies. Unimaginable.

If she were still alive, who knows where he’d be. Not here, in the Harts’ kitchen. Who he is now, with a present for someone else’s kid tucked under his arm, would be completely unrecognizable to that other Rust Cohle—the one who’s still a father and a husband, not a killer and an ex-junkie.

Maggie offers him a glass of ice water, and he takes it, mumbling thanks. Sipping it makes him feel better.

“You’re sure you’re okay to be here?” she asks, looking at him with the intent eyes of a woman too smart not to read him.

Rust glances up at her. “Yeah,” he says. “’m fine.”

“You can leave whenever you want to. Marty will survive.”

Rust finds him sitting in one of those rocking patio chairs in the shade of the awning. The sliding glass door’s already open, and Rust pauses there, water glass sweating in his hand. Pink streamers float around him in the breeze like ghosts. He watches Marty looking out at the backyard, where Macie and another little girl her age dance around to some old music in a couple of crafty crowns with multicolored ribbons hanging down around their faces. Rust doesn’t make a sound. Marty doesn’t realize he’s there. The sun lights up the overgrown green grass, and Marty looks peaceful. It’s the kind of peace that Rust has never imagined his whole life, because it’s always been so far outside the realm of his existence. Not just peace with the world around him but peace with himself. That Marty Hart could be capable of feeling at peace with himself just goes to show that he is incapable of guilt, or as close to it as any man can be who isn’t a psycho. Rust’s urge to roll his eyes is quelled by an equally surprising sense of appreciation. Marty shouldn’t feel peaceful about anything, but it’s kind of nice that he does.

Marty looks over in Rust’s general direction and starts in his chair. “Jesus. How the fuck long you been standing there?”

“Not long,” Rust drawls. He steps out onto the concrete and slides the door almost shut behind him. He pulls up one of the other chairs next to Marty’s and sits.

“Didn’t we have a conversation about acting like a normal fucking human being in public?” Marty says.

“Maybe.” Rust fishes out a cigarette and lighter from his shirt pocket. “I try to forget things unimportant.”

Marty glares at him but settles down again. “Besides dinner, cake, and presents, I have no idea how I’m supposed to get through the rest of the night, so I appreciate you coming by.”

Rust sucks on his Camel and doesn’t reply.

The two men sit together in silence a while, until Rust’s about halfway through his cigarette.

“You thought about the girl at all?” Marty asks. “Kelly.”

The girl they rescued from Ledoux and DeWall’s. Rust checked up on her a few weeks after the big-gunfight-that-wasn’t, by way of phoning her mother. The woman told him that Kelly don’t talk no more, and she sent her to live at the state mental hospital in Jackson. Rust told Marty as much. That was months ago.

“No,” says Rust.

“Me neither,” says Marty. “’cept for today.”

It’s something you learn pretty quick if you’re right for detective work: how to separate the emotional, empathizing part of you from the person who wades through the world’s shit every day. How to be clinical about someone else’s pain and horror. How to watch it, prod it, catalog it, analyze the pictures with the same detachment as a wildlife documentarian observing lions shred the flesh of baby gazelles and eat the pieces. It’s the same desensitization as the surgeon’s: blood is blood and guts lose their grossness and death is a neutral fact no different than the price of gas. More so, the homicide detective’s emotional and psychological immunity is akin to the soldier’s, though they are usually on opposite sides of the main event.

When Rust and Marty carried Kelly Rita and the dead boy out of that hellhole in the countryside, they weren’t thinking of their own kids at all. They were too far into their careers for that. And while an accident and a murder are worlds apart, Rust didn’t have to imagine his own daughter in Kelly’s place; he already knows what it’s like to bury a killed child. He’s glad Sofia got hit by a car at two, instead of abducted, raped, tortured, and murdered later on, but from where he’s standing, pain is pain. Loss is loss.

He sits there next to Marty, watching Macie and her friend bouncing on the trampoline in the sun, and remembers that no matter what happens, life goes on. The world doesn’t care about your sob story because it’s too preoccupied with all its own, and time stops for no one. Sofia Cohle’s dead and Kelly Rita’s in the nut house, but Audrey Hart is having a birthday party. And Rust is in attendance, dressed and sober, sitting with his partner. His best friend.

He wasn’t lying when he told Marty that he lacks the constitution for suicide. And if he’s going to be alive one way or the other, having a smoke in the Harts’ backyard sure beats getting fucked up at home alone.

Rust turns his head to look at Marty, and after a moment, Marty meets his gaze.

“What?”

Rust doesn’t answer, almost squinting at the other man, cigarette smoke clouding the air in front of his face.

Marty looks away, back at the girls, and draws on his beer.

“Thank you,” Rust says, after a little while.

Marty looks at him again, shocked blue eyes, lips parted. Like getting thanked by Rust Cohle is the kind of thing he could write a whole chapter on in his autobiography, an achievement right up there with creating two human beings and winning All-Around Cowboy at the Louisiana State Rodeo Championship in ’82.

“For what?” says Marty.

Rust brings the cigarette up to his lips and smokes, rocking his chair a bit. “Asking me here.”

They both know it’s just a metaphor for everything. Their friendship, their partnership, whatever weird and nameless thing they got going with Maggie. They reckon it’s also about things that lie in their future.

Marty stares at him for a couple beats, mouth pursed, and Rust gets the sense that he wants to take him somewhere private and hug him or kiss him or both. Because Marty’s a sap and a sucker for appreciation. Instead, he just looks off into the distance along with Rust and lets the moment be.

They eat dinner at the kitchen island, while Maggie supervises the girls at the dining table. She sticks a big, waxy candle in the shape of the number eleven into the birthday cake, and when Audrey blows it out, Marty’s there with the camcorder in one hand and a grin on his face. Rust lingers in the background, somewhere behind Marty at the end of the table opposite Audrey, watching her open presents and clutching his own in his hand. The other girls coo and squeal over each thing she uncovers, as if they get to share the goods. Maggie reminds Audrey at least three times to say thank you and writes down each gift and the name of the giver on a white legal pad, so she can—like any good Southern woman—mail out thank you cards.

Audrey gets to her parents’ present last: horseback riding lessons. She squeals and throws her arms around Maggie’s neck. She’d been asking about riding all summer. Marty was happy as hell to get her into horses, already imagining her as his rodeo successor, but Maggie wanted to wait long enough to confirm that Audrey’s interest wasn’t just superficial and momentary.

“Thank you, Daddy!” she says, beaming at Marty from across the dining room.

“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” he replies, his camcorder trained on her.

Audrey starts to climb out of her chair.

“I think you have one more, honey,” Maggie says, and looks across the length of the table at Rust. Audrey follows her mom’s gaze and looks at him too, as if noticing him for the first time today.

Rust offers a brief, tight smile and ambles over to the blonde girl, past her friends who stare at him wide-eyed with curiosity. He hands Audrey the book. She doesn’t rip off the wrapping paper like she did with the other wrapped gifts, but picks it apart like she knows that Rust went through the trouble of buying a roll of paper from the store and won’t use it again.

She holds the book in both hands and looks at the cover.

“What is it?” Marty asks.

“ _The Outsiders_ ,” says Audrey, the words unfamiliar on her tongue. She holds the book up and turns it around so that her father can see it.

“Huh. Never heard of it.”

But Maggie makes pointed eye contact with Rust. She’s read it.

He says to Audrey, “It’s all right if you don’t read it right away. You might like it more a few years from now.”

Audrey flips the edges of the pages with her thumb, inspecting the cover of the book.

“What do you say, Audrey?” Maggie coaxes, her tone lowered.

“Thank you, Rust.” Audrey looks up at him and smiles like a grown-up, with the same kind of gentleness that her mother sometimes has for him. An awareness of Rust’s fragility that doesn’t include pity or even compassion, just enough sensitivity to handle him with care—no different than being real quiet around somebody with a migraine.

Rust smiles with that tired, old sadness in his heart. “Happy Birthday,” he says and swallows his daughter’s name. “Audrey.”

The room is quiet for a long beat, the ten little girls besides Audrey all watching Rust like he’s some kind of alien, and the spell only breaks when he turns away and walks back to Marty. Hides behind him, a shadow.  

* * *

 

The end of the first week in October, Rust and Marty are in the car bickering, on the way to Melville an hour northwest of Lafayette. They’re going to check in on a possible lead, for their newest case: black male victim found dead in his vehicle, in the parking lot of a church. Head shot. An actual mystery that’s gradually clearing up.

Talking about the crime scene steered the conversation to Marty’s recent insistence on Sunday service at Abundant Life Church of Christ. He tried dragging Maggie and the girls with him a few times, but he’s been going alone for a couple months. Wears a suit and everything.

Rust calls bullshit.

“Just because you believe in nothing doesn’t make faith useless to the rest of us,” Marty says, behind the wheel.

“You don’t even have faith,” says Rust. “You going there once a week, settin in the pew with a fucking hymnal in your lap and nodding along to sermons that are seventy-five percent congregational opinion and twenty-five percent book fiction isn’t about belief in God. It’s about you trying to be someone you’re not. Your own family doesn’t buy it, Marty. Shit.”

“I got news for you, Rust. I, like everybody else in this fucking state except you, am not an atheist. I never have been. I don’t need to fool people into thinking I’m a Christian because I am.”

“You fucked a woman who wasn’t your wife and got caught, and now you’re doing penance because Maggie forgave you. You actually believe in fairy tales that pass for history and spiritual truth, fine. But that’s not why you go to church.”

“How the fuck would you know why I do anything? Huh? Are you psychic?”

“I know because I know you,” says Rust. “And I’m not a God damn moron, all right, I’ve spent my whole career dealing with people who are the cow shit on the boot heel of mankind’s reputation and I know guilt when I see it. I also know that reform is a lie people tell themselves to avoid the truth that they are essentially bad and always will be. And not so deep down, you know it too. So stop going to church.”

Marty scowls, face scrunching up around clenched teeth. “Fuck you,” he says. “I’m trying to be a better man, for my _family_ , and all you can do is tell me I’m a lost cause who don’t even have sincerity? Your outlook on life isn’t the truth just because it’s the shittiest fucking option, Rust. Why do you care if I go to church or not, anyway? How does that affect your life?”

“I can be friends with a fuck-up, Marty. But I can’t fucking stand someone who’s dishonest with himself about what he is.”

Marty shoots Rust a skeptical glare. “A man makes mistakes, he is not beyond redemption. People change. I’m changing.”

Rust tracks his eyes across the landscape around them on Highway 105, the Atchafalaya River running along their right to the east. He puffs on his cigarette, now a short stub. He’s been chain smoking since they got on the road and suspects he will again on the way back to the office. He used to do it when he argued with Claire too.

“All you’re doing, Marty, is putting a new coat of paint on a car with a fucked up engine. You want to change, try it because you don’t like who you see in the mirror anymore. Not for your wife or your kids or some illusion of God. It still won’t work, but at least you’ll come out of it something better than a conman.”

“Jesus,” Marty says.

“That’s a broken commandment.”

“You total shit. Who are you to give me advice on self-improvement? Last I checked, you’re too fucking comfortable being the bastard you are.”

Rust rolls down his window and tosses the cigarette butt outside. “Listen to me. You are not Dr. Huxtable living the God damn American Dream. Your marriage almost ended less than six months ago because sexual monogamy goes against your nature. You’ve spent most of the last twenty years drunk and hooked on pussy, chasing every thrill you could get your hands on without compromising your bullshit good ol’ boy image. If you go to that church for the next fifty years and have yourself buried in their fucking cemetery, it won’t change who you really are. You’re not endearing yourself to Maggie or the girls, you’re giving them a reason not to take you seriously. Go to AA, tell Maggie you’re going to hump somebody else before you do, but don’t hide behind the same charade you used the first time around.”

Marty’s quiet, then shakes his head. “You didn’t get it at that tent revival back in February, and you still don’t. Religion is not just about conformity and image. It’s a way for people to hold themselves to a higher standard. A reason for them not to do all this fucked up shit we see day in and day out. Some of us need that, Rust. We need a way to focus on what’s important, what’s right.”

Rust’s got half a dozen smart and sassy comebacks for that, but he holds his tongue. At this point, the conversation’s just going in circles, and as comfortable as he is wearing things out, he doesn’t want to piss Marty off bad enough to damage their relationship. Rust’s always been real good at exploiting weakness, but this time, it doesn’t feel right. Marty’s a fool to believe that church can make him righteous, but the sound of his voice tells Rust that the hope is at least part genuine.

They take the exit to Melville and head east on a wide street off the highway.

“Pull over,” says Rust.

Marty looks at him for a beat, then pulls the car onto the side of the road and kills the engine. He lifts his hands up and drops them back down onto his thighs. “What?”

Rust stares ahead through the windshield, across a stretch of grassy land leading to the railroad bridge that crosses the river. The bridge metal is a dark red, puts the taste of pennies and saltwater in his mouth. He feels his agitation buzzing through his muscles, in his stomach, softer than a few minutes ago.

“Kiss me.”

Marty gapes at him and glances around. “Are you fucking high?”

“Ain’t no one here to see,” Rust says, voice hushed now.

He looks at Marty, and Marty looks him. They’re alone in the car, but this is different than the first time. They’re not in the dark with alcohol in their blood. Maggie’s not here.

“You change your mind about it?” Rust asks, surprised at the disappointment.

Marty pauses. “No,” he says.

He lifts his hand to Rust’s face, and Rust almost flinches, eyelids fluttering as Marty takes his chin between thumb and fingers. Marty leans in and kisses him, lips careful and shy. It only lasts a few seconds, and they look into each other’s eyes, Marty still holding Rust’s chin.

They see each other.

Marty kisses Rust again, and they close their eyes, lips pressed together with more force but mouths closed. They break apart for a second and kiss again, like they need each other awful—not with erotic desire but existential desperation. Rust slides his hand up to Marty’s chest, palm flat over the other man’s heart like Rust might push him away any minute.... or he needs to make sure they don’t close anymore distance. Marty’s hand moves from Rust’s chin to his cheek, cupping it gentle. Gentleness that always takes Rust by surprise. How could it share a body with everything terrible in Marty? How could Rust feel this kiss slake some drought in his heart, if he’s the same man guilty of enough sins for the Texas state electric chair?

Marty stops kissing him and exhales, resting his forehead against Rust’s.

Rust leans away from him and says, “What’s your church think about that?”

Marty looks at him. “You fucking asshole,” he whispers and rests his head back on his seat, looking toward the car ceiling.

They’re silent for a minute or two, before Marty turns the key in the ignition.

They drive to their interviewee’s house and do their thing. 

* * *

 

Maggie’s on top of him in their bed again, kissing his mouth and dragging her fingers up into the fabric of his t-shirt, when Marty says, “Wait, wait. I have to tell you something.”

She stops but doesn’t move off his pelvis, feeling him hard right underneath her. On instinct, she suspects he’s going to confess something about another woman, and part of her wants to tell him to shut up until after they fuck because she really wants to get off right now. It’s an inconvenient time to feel any kind of tension about their open marriage agreement.

Marty’s got his hands on her thighs, and he’s looking up at her with a strange concern in his eyes. It isn’t defensive or guilty, just worried.

“What is it?” says Maggie.

Marty’s quiet for a beat. “I kissed Rust.”

The knot loosens in Maggie’s stomach. “I know.”

“No, I mean—I kissed him again, the other day. In the car. We were working, on our way somewhere, and he asked me to pull over some place where there wasn’t anything around and wanted me to kiss him. So I did.”

Maggie blinks at her husband. She is immediately aware that instead of jealousy or betrayal or hurt, she feels only curiosity. That night on the couch, the three of them together, she gave Marty permission to kiss Rust because it felt right in the moment. Natural, like an extension of her and Rust kissing. She knew without even thinking about it what it meant and what it didn’t mean.

“Okay,” she says.

Marty purses his lips, still looking worried. “We promised we would tell each other the truth,” he says. “When we decided we could see other people, the terms were sex and nothing else. I don’t know where this falls. I don’t even know what the fuck I’m doing, but I need to know.... what you think.”

“Marty. Do you want to have sex with Rust?”

“No. Of course not. I just.... do you have a problem with me and him?”

“Are you asking if I have a problem with you kissing Rust or if I have a problem with you kissing a man?”

“Both? I guess?”

Maggie searches Marty’s face, her hands covering his on her thighs. “No,” she says. “If you suddenly decided you wanted to fool around with men, I don’t know how I’d feel about that. But this thing between you and Rust—I get it. I kissed him too. And I liked it.”

Marty’s quiet for a beat, looking at her like he needs soothing.

“Are you afraid of what it means?” Maggie asks. “The two of you being close like that?”

He swallows and nods. “Little bit.”

She pauses. “You still want to fuck me?”

“Hell, yeah,” he says, voice hoarse.

“You think about other women too?”

He hesitates. “Yeah.”

“So you know you’re not gay,” she tells him. “You ever want to kiss guys besides Rust?”

Marty wrinkles his nose. “God, no,” he says. “And before you ask, I’d sooner die than get near some other dude’s dick.”

“Does kissing him feel the same as kissing me?”

He considers the question, and relief finally surfaces in his eyes. “No.”

Maggie leans down slow and plants her mouth on Marty’s, hands sliding up his chest. “Now, will you please quit thinking of Rust and fuck me?” she says.

Marty smiles. 

* * *

 

Rust doesn’t know what the hell he’s going to do when he gets there, but he drives to the hospital where Maggie works, checking his watch as he goes. Nine forty-seven. Her shift’s ending, and he’s going to catch her before she goes home. He’s been thinking about her since he kissed Marty in Melville, sitting in his lawn chair at home smoking and drinking and stalling the quaaludes into the middle of the night. He’s seen her once and didn’t act any different than usual, knowing intuitively that Marty hadn’t mentioned him and Rust’s kiss to her yet.

There’s been a burr in Rust’s side about this thing, not guilt exactly, and it didn’t make sense to him until tonight. He needs to talk to Maggie. He can’t do it over the phone, and he can’t wait.

She’s crossing the parking lot just as he pulls into a space a few rows down from her station wagon, reaching into her purse for her keys. Rust hops out of his truck and starts toward her. She looks up and sees him, stops in her tracks. There’s a flash in her eyes as he gets closer: fear.

“Marty’s fine,” Rust says, when he reaches her. “I just want to talk to you.”

“Okay,” says Maggie, sounding uncertain. “And it’s urgent enough that you had to come here?”

“I need to say this to you alone. In person.”

She looks at him with concern now and waits, arms relaxed at her side, keys in one hand and purse slung over the opposite shoulder.

Rust stares at the asphalt between their feet with his hands on his hips. He can hear the white lot lights buzzing, the whoosh of passing cars on the streets nearby. The air is cool and comfortable. He almost reaches for a cigarette to calm his nerves but resists. He lifts his eyes to meet hers and says, “I don’t want to ruin your life, Maggie. You’ve been real good to me, and I’m grateful. I am. I’m not trying to reject you. I’m not trying to reject Marty. I—” He chokes and pauses. “I’m not good for people. I came to Louisiana with one suitcase and nobody to call because I’ve destroyed everything I got close to my whole life. If you knew half the shit I did between ’89 and ‘94, you wouldn’t want anything to do with me. You wouldn’t trust me. You shouldn’t.”

She’s looking at him with a bulldozed expression, mouth slightly open.

“You and Marty are trying to get right with each other. I don’t want to be the reason your marriage falls apart. And I need my job. I need it—and if anything goes wrong between me and Marty, the job’s gone too. And I don’t know what I’d do, Maggie. I don’t know what I’d do then.”

Rust’s whispering now, voice raw and thin.

Maggie shakes her head, frowning. “You aren’t going to screw anything up, Rust. Things have been better with you around. And you are not responsible for my relationship with Marty.”

“I’m too close,” Rust says, as if it pains him. “I’m too close, and I’m too fucked up.”

“If the physical stuff bothers you, we can stop,” she says, lowering her voice, glancing to her left. “But I don’t think it’s a problem. If I did, I would’ve said something.”

Rust blinks, eyes glassy and bloodshot. He feels a painful lump in his throat and an ache of self-loathing in his heart.

Maggie takes a step toward him, and he holds his ground.

“Rust,” she says. “If this is really about you wanting to do the right thing, I’m telling you that I am a grown woman, and I can take care of myself. I’m not stupid. Or reckless. I know what I want, and I take responsibility for my choices. If this is about you being afraid for yourself.... all I can do is ask you to trust me. And trust Marty. We’ve never done this before either, but it feels right. You feel right.”

Rust hangs his head and shuts his eyes. Breathes. Feels the hollow of his stomach.

Maggie steps closer. “I know about you and Marty.”

He opens his eyes and looks into hers. And that’s the other piece of this, the thorn he’s been pawing at like a dog. His friendship with Marty’s not like anything he’s had before, not with a man or a woman. He doesn’t know how to navigate it, where it’s going, what it means about himself, or if a happy ending’s even possible. But that’s not what bothers Rust. What bothers him is the fact that as much he cares about Maggie, as much as sees her as a friend, he’s closer to Marty. He spends at least eight hours a day, five days a week, with Marty. Marty know things about him that Maggie doesn’t and never will know. Rust is infinitely more capable of relating to Marty than he is to Maggie, and the truth is, that works the other way around too.

The word “partner” has grown into something with layers of meaning between the two men. It’s not just an assignment, an arrangement that can’t be helped. They are not a couple of guys who hang out once or twice a week, a few hours at a time. They are partners now not much different than Marty and Maggie are spouses. Maybe more so than the married couple. Time spent together, knowledge of each other, interdependence, confessions and secrets and loyalty, arguments that do not and cannot sever their tie without a mess of effort equivalent to divorce proceedings. Sharing space, sharing meals, sharing possessions.

Now, the touch. Now, the physical. As physical as Rust ever wants to be with anyone.

It isn’t cheating. It isn’t a choice Marty has to make. Rust and Maggie fit together in Marty’s life as snug as two chambers of the same heart.

And something about that scares Rust.

She stands close to him, inches from him, and says, “I would rather he kiss you than fuck another woman.”

A chill runs through Rust’s body.

“If he’s going to love someone else—I want it to be you.”

They’re looking deep into each other’s eyes, the air between them thick and heavy, magnetic. He wants to fall on his knees at her feet because she is so much better than he’ll ever be, the only point of true goodness in the wasteland of Rust’s life. He doesn’t deserve her. Marty doesn’t deserve her. That Maggie’s still here, choosing them, is a miracle Rust will never be able to explain.

They grab onto each other and kiss, his hand cupping the back of her head, her hand laid over his jaw and cheek. Warmth and gratitude and some kind of sublimated eroticism. Their lips crushed together, eyes closed. In another life, this would be a mile marker on the way to something else, but here, it is everything.

They have already arrived.  


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FUCKING FINALLY. Jesus Christ, sorry for taking so fucking long with this part. I've been too busy writing other shit and dragged my ass on this. Hopefully, it's worth the wait. I'm not finished with this story, no idea how long it'll go on for, but I hope the next part doesn't take quite as long as this one did. Thank you so much to everyone who reads, comments, etc. 
> 
> Aro!Ace!Rust gives me life, ya'll. Not done with him yet.

Rust shows up at the Hart house late on a Saturday afternoon to spend the evening with Maggie, parking his truck next to her car in the driveway and walking slowly to the door, as if he wants to keep the sun company as long as it's there. Marty took the girls away for the weekend, something he periodically does now because he got it into his head that he should show them he's wants to spend time with them even without their mother's collusion. Rust suspects that it's partially a ploy to show Maggie that he's a better father now than he was before the affair, but he also figures that this is one of those situations where the result matters more than the motive.

Driving over here, Rust pondered if he would've done this sort of thing with Sofia and if it would've been his idea instead of Claire's. He would cut off his left nut to see his daughter again, to spend a whole weekend with her at age six or nine or twelve—but if he was used to her being alive, maybe he would take her for granted, the way Marty takes his kids for granted. It's the curse of parents whose children survive childhood: losing sight of the shine on them, the way people lose their excitement over a new car or a promotion after enough time goes by. They expect to outlive their kids, and they get too comfortable in that expectation.

Maggie smiles when she answers the door, the way she's been smiling at Rust ever since their parking lot kiss. Rust isn't used to being on the receiving end of that kind of brightness. Claire never looked that happy to see him. Marty doesn't smile at him that way. Rust doesn't know how to respond to it, so he settles into his quiet self-consciousness and waits for the brightness to fade.

She leads him into the kitchen and asks him what he wants to drink. Rust sits on one of the island stools, dressed in one of his few plaid shirts and a pair of blue jeans, his sleeves rolled to his elbows. As Maggie slides a glass of ice water across the countertop to him, he thinks about how strange it is to be in this house without Marty or the girls around. He still isn't used to the silence of it, the sense of emptiness. He suspects Maggie isn't either, or she'd be less inclined to invite him over every time she's here alone for the whole weekend.

"What've you been doin'?" he says, before sipping his water, watching her with the same focus that usually disarms suspects in interrogation rooms.

Maggie leans toward him over the countertop, resting her elbows and her chest on the cool stone, and shakes her head. "Slept, mostly. I worked the graveyard shift last night. You?"

Rust shakes his head. "Nothing."

"Working?"

"Sort of."

Maggie gives him a knowing look. She's been to his house, seen that he doesn't own a TV or much of anything else. There's only so many ways he could spend his time.

"Don't you ever get tired of thinking about terrible things?" she says.

He pauses, blinks, formulates an answer different than his reflexive response. "Better someone else's raw deal than my own."

Her mouth wilts a little and she looks down at the countertop.

Rust sips more water and looks around the room. "Where'd they go?" he asks.

"Cypress Black Bayou," says Maggie. "Outside Benton. It's up north. They got a cabin, and they're going to do whatever there is to do."

"When's the last ya'll went on a family vacation?"

"Like a real trip? A couple years ago. Before Marty's father died. I always thought we'd travel more right about now—the girls are old enough, it's more doable. But so far, it hasn't turned out that way."

Sometimes, when he's lying awake at night, staring at the shadows on his ceiling, Rust will try to imagine taking Sofia to Alaska. He would've done it in the summertime. Just the two of them. He'd show her the wildflower fields, rent a boat and teach her how to fish, lie down with her in the back of his truck and tell her stories about the stars until she fell asleep. He hasn't been back since he left at eighteen, and he grew up knowing that place as the cold, harsh, brutal training ground for the rest of his godforsaken life. If he had returned with his daughter, he would've remade it. Would've smoked out the beauty to give to her. Would've been the father he always wished he'd had.

"How are you, Rust?" Maggie says, her tone gentle and inviting.

He wonders how long it's been since she spoke to Marty that way. "Fine," he says. "Better."

They both know he means better since that night in the hospital parking lot, when he almost stepped out of whatever fragile and complicated dance he and the Harts are choreographing. Neither one of them mentioned the conversation to Marty. They haven't told him about the kiss either. They know he wouldn't mind, but for some reason, they're keeping it a secret between them, like they need something for themselves that distinguishes their relationship as its own independent life force. Not just an extension of Rust and Marty's friendship.

"What about you?" Rust asks.

Maggie looks away, off her right shoulder, and doesn't answer for a beat. She makes eye contact with him again and says, "I need to show you something."

He follows her into the master bedroom and waits as she disappears into the walk-in closet. He watches her take a big, round hat box down from the shelf above the clothing rack, set it down on the floor, and pull something from it. She brings it to him: a notebook covered in bright pink fluff. He looks at it in her hand, then up at her face again, a dark sense of foreboding hitting him in the gut. When she holds it out to him, he doesn't take it right away.

"It's Audrey's," Maggie says.

He sits on the bed and opens the notebook in his lap, to the place where a bookmark's stuck in the spine. He looks at each drawing carefully, turning the pages until he reaches the first blank one. He doesn't make a sound or look away, aware of Maggie watching him as he studies the images no different than he's looked at thousands of crime scene photos of murder victims.

When he's finished, he lifts his head and sees that Maggie is unemotional, her eyes the gray of a cold sea. Rust closes the notebook.

"When did she draw these?" he says.

"Months ago," says Maggie. "Early in the year, not long before I met you. Her teacher called, after she got caught showing the notebook to some other girls. Marty and I talked to her about it, and she just said that her friends dared her to do it because they thought it was funny."

"Has she drawn any more since?"

Maggie shakes her head, arms folded now.

"What did Marty think about this?" Rust says, lifting the notebook off his lap.

"He didn't take it seriously," Maggie says. "Or he believed what Audrey said because it was the easy thing to do. I don't think he wanted to deal with it at the time. You had that case, the woman in Erath, then we split up for a while. I guess we both let ourselves sweep it under the rug. But I'm not so sure we should leave it there."

Rust looks at her, the weight of the notebook's implications like a cinder block in his belly. He knows what the likeliest explanation for the drawings is. He doesn't want to believe it, but he knows it's probably true. Looking at Maggie, he's pretty sure that the same suspicion has been in the back of her mind since the minute she first saw the drawings too. The cop in Marty must've considered it, but his penchant for denial, coupled with a paternal desire to believe in his daughter's safety, made it comfortable for him to forget about the notebook.

Rust isn't going to forget.

"Has she said anything about it?" he asks.

"No," says Maggie. "Nobody has."

He thinks for a long minute. "You want my advice?"

"Yes. I want to know if I should do something, or if Audrey's better off leaving this in the past."

"Nothing ever gets left in the past," Rust says. He rubs his forehead, tries not to think what he would've done if Sofia had lived long enough to be preyed upon. "I'm going to take this. I'm going to talk to someone about it. Then I'll let you know what I think."

"Okay," Maggie says. "Thank you."

"Don't tell Marty I know about this."

She nods.

Rust stands up, steps into her space, looks into her eyes with his own too intense—like they're in the box and she's guilty of murder and he knows it. He has the notebook tucked between his arm and his thigh, in his hand.

"If someone hurt Audrey," he says, his voice a low murmur, "I'll find them. Sooner or later, I will. And when I do—I'm not going to arrest them."

She stares at him, seeing the side of him that she's never seen, that she always knew was there. The side he hides from anyone who isn't a cop or a criminal. She glimpses the man he used to be, still is, the one only Marty will ever fully know. The kind of man she should fear, the kind she should want to protect herself from. She feels the chill of it zooming through her body from head to toe, pooling in her belly like liquid nitrogen.

"Are you prepared for that?" he says. "Are you prepared to be the catalyst of something terrible?"

She pauses, then says, "If someone hurt my daughter, I may be the one to do something terrible."

He looks at her and knows she's capable. He looks at her and sees what really drew Marty to this woman, whether he realized it or not: at her core, she isn't sweet or soft, but sharp and cold. Stronger than Marty, stronger than he'll ever see. She's a skinning knife wrapped in floral print handkerchief. He picked her up because she was pretty, held onto her because he needs something dangerous bad as anything. That's what Maggie doesn't understand about her husband: he may fuck other women—younger, unfamiliar, wild—but he'll always come back to her, because she has what they don't. The power to destroy him, from the inside out.

* * *

Marty goes to the Hot Tomcat for the first time in a long time, not counting the night he had to pick up a drunk and beaten Rust at 3 AM. He sits at the corner end of the bar farthest from the entrance and orders a beer, unsure how much he wants to drink considering how he's been doing his best to stay sober ever since Maggie took him back. He has a good view of the room from his seat, the length of the bar and the tables and booths to his left, and he's giving himself until ten o'clock to find a girl he wants to chat up.

Forty-five minutes go by, during which he finishes the first beer and starts on a second. He checks his pager too many times and doesn't receive any messages. He checks his watch as if he's got a date with someone who's supposed to show up at a particular time. He thinks about calling up some of the guys from work to hang out with him if he hits the hour mark without any lady luck, wonders if any of them would snitch on him should he meet a woman, figures Rust is the only person he could trust not to make a big deal out of Marty picking someone up, imagines trying to flirt with a woman in front of Rust Cohle and immediately decides he's going to do this night solo.

As he sits there alone, waiting and nursing his beer, he thinks about Maggie and tries not to feel guilty—which is funny, considering he has her permission now to fuck other women and never felt guilty about cheating on her when he didn't have permission. He called the house and left a message on the answering machine before he left the office, letting her know he was going out and probably wouldn't be back for dinner.

Sometimes, he looks at Maggie and wonders how he ended up married to someone that beautiful, that smart, and that strong. Marty's known her since they were college kids, and she's never been a woman who needed him to survive or even to be happy. She has her own career, her own friends, her own interests, and she's never once paused to consider whether she ought to be more dependent and intertwined with Marty. She's a good mother, but even when the girls were infants, Marty could see that tenderness and sentimentality never came naturally to her. She is not overprotective of their children, nor does she allow her identity or her existence to revolve solely around them. She's everything that Marty's mother wasn't, everything that the ideal Southern woman is not, and if he's honest with himself, it makes sense that he ended up with her. She's not all the things he likes to think that he wants; she's all the things that he actually needs.

Then, there's Rust Cohle. The most annoying, ridiculous, fucked up person Marty has ever known. The one and only friend Marty's ever cared about deeply. Sometimes he feels more paternal over Rust Cohle than he does over his own daughters. He can be so irritated with Rust that he wants to fucking wring the asshole's neck, then turn around and concern himself with the man's well-being. Rust is slowly getting better, in terms of his mental health and his mood, but he shows no signs of converting to Marty's worldview anytime soon. Marty's learning to let Rust's bullshit roll off him like water off a duck, learning when to ignore his depressing smarty pants ramblings and when not to take Rust personally—which is most of the time. Meanwhile, he's also getting used to their physical intimacy, to his own sense of comfort and pleasure sharing it with another man. It's not like sex, in the sense that Marty could live without it, but once in a while, the thought creeps up on him that maybe it's more serious. Touching and kissing Rust feels more significant than most of the sex he's had in his life, excluding what he's shared with Maggie. It's weird. Too weird for Marty Hart.

A young woman, probably in her late twenties, walks into the Hot Tomcat alone. Marty sees her and knows she's the one tonight. She stands just inside the threshold and scans the room for a seat, before making eye contact with him. He smiles at her. She smiles back and comes up to the bar, sliding up onto the stool next to Marty's.

"I'm June," she says, offering her hand to shake.

"Marty," he says, taking her hand in his. It's a good hand. "Can I get you a drink?"

She orders a beer and then another. Marty loves beer-drinking women. Not as much as he loves women who drink straight whiskey but more than he likes the ones who only drink wine, the ones who order sugary cocktails, or the ones who don't drink at all.

June is a structural engineer who works for the city. She likes bridges.

"They're a way of bringing the world together," she says, her voice soft and beautiful with the optimism of the young and an accent from Chattanooga, Tennessee.

She graduated from LSU and decided to stay in Louisiana on account of her now ex-boyfriend.

"But we don't have to talk about that," she says, smiling.

They do talk about Marty's bull riding career, about college football and their Mardi Gras memories. She tells him about Tennessee until she starts to sound like she misses it, then asks him if he's always lived in Louisiana. She doesn't ask him if he's ever been married or has any children. His wedding ring's in the breast pocket of his blazer.

The beer bottles crowd the bar top beside them, until they're both a little drunk.

"You just hold on a minute, I'ma go to the restroom," Marty says, as he gets up. "I'll be right back."

He's ruddy in the bathroom mirror, his body warm with booze and lust, and he feels a kind of rush at the thought that he's not sneaking around now. He's allowed to do this. He's free. There's nothing to hide or be afraid of.

June meets him in the hallway, pushes him against the wall and kisses him. They make out until somebody passes them by, then break apart grinning like they forgot they were in public.

"Hey, you wanna?" she says, looking at him with mischievous lips.

God, is she pretty.

"Yeah," says Marty. "Hell, yeah. Let's get outta here."

Maybe they shouldn't be driving, but he follows her to her apartment complex.

They don't even make it to the bedroom. They tear off their clothes in the living room, kissing and feeling each other up. They fuck on the couch, Marty sitting underneath her as she rides him. He lays her down on the carpet and eats her out until she comes, still hard himself, then she sucks his dick until he's close. He fucks into her from behind as she braces herself on the coffee table, but finishes in the kitchen, her lower back against the edge of the counter top and his hands gripping her ass. She comes a second time, just before he does.

It isn't until they're sprawled out on the living room floor, naked and catching their breath, that he thinks of Maggie. He imagines her face when he tells her about this. Remembers fucking her when they were in college, remembers fucking her last week. He loves her. Always has. He's loved her longer than he's done just about anything else. Even when they piss each other off, he loves her.

June strokes his chest with one of those good hands, interrupting him.

A little while later, they're making out in the laundry room. June sitting on the washer, and Marty's kissing her, Maggie's face flashing through his mind first, followed by Rust. She's sweeter than Maggie, and she's got none of Rust's hard edges. She's simple, so simple, just like what they're doing now. It's a relief to Marty, that simplicity. Nothing about his marriage, his family life, his friendship with Rust is simple. Or easy.

He goes down on June again, fingering her as he does, and she moans into a clean towel plucked from the top of the laundry basket sitting on the dryer.

* * *

Rust's sitting in his lawn chair, staring at the crime scene photographs tacked to the wall and sipping from a glass of whiskey every few minutes. Audrey Hart's pink notebook lays open on the floor before him, between his feet spread wide. He knows he isn't going to sleep tonight, not a single fucking minute, unless he risks overdosing on his dope. His mind's too wound up. The drawings in the pink notebook have been needling him for days, ever since Maggie sent him home with it. He's been in this kinda mood where everything irrelevant to his work feels like an insulting waste of time.

And helping Audrey's his work.

He's not a psychologist, thank God, but he ain't stupid either. He knows what the likeliest explanation is for those drawings. Every time he thinks about it, his stomach turns a little, and he's more disturbed that he's affected than by the actual situation. He's so used to mucking around in the filth and suffering, the victimization of people, without feeling a damn thing about it except a determination to vindicate it in his way. But if something happened to Audrey, that's personal—and there's a reason why cops aren't allowed to work cases involving someone from their personal life. They get too emotional. There's too much risk of them twisting police work into a quest for vengeance, and in that quest, a willingness to break legal and moral codes that cops least of all cannot break.

That's why Rust is not going to say shit to Marty, if he finds out some horrible truth about Audrey. He doesn't know what he's going to do, but he knows he's going to keep it to self until it's finished.

Somebody knocks on the door in front of him, the one between kitchen and living room.

Rust pauses, just looking at the door for a moment.

"Rust," Marty calls from outside. "I know you're in there, your truck's parked in the driveway."

Rust leans over and grabs the pink notebook. He shoves it into Crash's red trunk that's set against the wall in the corner opposite his bed, then goes to open the door.

Marty's been somewhere with someone. Rust knows it the second he sees him, the other man standing on his doorstep in his work clothes, tie hanging around his neck undone and hair mussed. If it was Maggie, Marty wouldn't be here at this time of night, in those clothes.

Rust just turns around and walks back to his chair, leaving the door open for Marty. Marty follows him in and shuts the door, looking at Rust like he's waiting for him to do something. Rust doesn't look at him as he takes another drink from his glass. He's not sure if he feels disappointed in Marty. He knows he isn't surprised. Open marriage or no, it was just a matter of time before Marty screwed someone who isn't Maggie.

"What are you doing here?" Rust says, his voice low and raspy.

Marty looks around the room like maybe he doesn't know why, then says, "Wanted to see you."

Rust looks at him and withholds a sarcastic reply. He almost feels like he's the estranged father of some wild teenager who's come to him as a way to avoid the wrath of the mother.

"Who is she?" Rust says, flicking his eyes back to the wall of case photos.

Marty presses his lips together in something of a frown. He shakes his head. "Just some girl I picked up in a bar."

Rust drinks more whiskey, the images and notes on his wall blurring together like some kind of greater whole whose shape he's supposed to recognize. "If you're ashamed to go home, you should've stayed at her place."

Marty rolls his eyes. "I'm not ashamed, you asshole. No need, remember? I really did want to see you. What the fuck are you doing?"

"What's it look like, Marty?"

"Looks like you're brooding in the fucking dark. Like Eeyore. Only less cute."

"What do you want, man? Because if you came here to brag about your first time exercising those extramarital rights of yours, I'm not interested."

Marty sighs and puts his hands on his hips, brushing back his suit jacket. His eyes roam the carpet for a moment, and Rust finishes his drink.

"Did you mean what you said?" Marty asks. "About not sleeping?"

Rust eyes him, having no idea why this question's coming up now. He barely remembers telling Marty once back during the Dora Lange investigation about not sleeping. No detail, just an offhand remark. He's surprised Marty remembers it.

Rust sticks his empty glass in between his thighs on the chair seat and folds his hands over the ends of the arm rests. "It's gotten better since the start of the year, but yeah—there are nights I don't sleep at all. When I do, it's usually no more than a few hours. I usually take something."

"Take something? Like what?"

"Barbiturates. Quaaludes."

"Jesus," Marty says, looking at him like he can't believe he's partners with a drug user.

If you ask Rust, it's a little late in the game to be surprised by this information.

"Why don't you just get a prescription for actual sleeping pills, like a normal fucking person?"

"Because they don't do shit," says Rust.

They gave him sleeping pills in North Shore, but they may as well have been M&Ms. They didn't increase the hours of sleep he got or improve the quality of his sleep. They didn't help the nightmares either. Eventually, Rust quit accepting them.

Marty still doesn't know about North Shore. Neither does Maggie. Rust intends to keep it that way, into the foreseeable future.

"You taking something tonight?" Marty says.

"I don't know," says Rust. "I was thinking, why bother, just stay up. Then again, it's a Friday. I don't have anywhere to be in the morning, so I could get drunk if I wanted. Take something in the middle of the night, if I change my mind."

"I'm asking because I want to stay."

Rust goes still. He looks at Marty.

"I don't exactly want to sleep eight hours while you do fuck knows what around here alone, but I don't want you taking a fucking Quaalude or whatever the shit's called either," Marty continues. "So why don't you try sleeping sober for once, and I'll see if it don't help having someone with you."

That night he got drunk and slept with Marty and Maggie in their bed is the only time he's had anybody sleep next to him who he was comfortable with since Claire. Those four years he was Crash, he fucked a handful of women to protect his image, but he almost never slept afterward, stalking around the apartment he had or sitting in his truck chain smoking. Sometimes, he'd shoot heroine to chase away the disgust he felt and nod off in the living room armchair. None of those women ever asked him why he left them to sleep alone. Maybe they assumed he just didn't want the closeness or maybe they didn't care what the reason was.

"You smell like pussy and booze," Rust tells Marty. "Go take a shower."

Marty's eyes linger on him for a moment and he nods, before disappearing upstairs.

Rust listens to the water running as he smokes a cigarette. Sometimes, Marty Hart is the most obvious, simple man he's ever met. Then, other times, he surprises Rust—like few things do. He's starting to understand why Maggie gave him a second chance.

It starts to rain just as the shower switches off. The walls of the house are thin, the roof too, and the sound of it raining is already loud.

Marty comes back with a blanket and one of the spare pillows he bought himself when he lived with Rust during his separation from Maggie, wearing a pair of boxer shorts and white t-shirt that he left with some other clothes in one of Rust's upstairs cupboards. Rust thought it was funny when he found the clothes, folded and neatly stacked on the top shelf of the cupboard. It was before Maggie and Marty decided to open their marriage, and Rust thought maybe Marty was smart enough to know that he'd probably get kicked out again.

Marty crosses the living room behind Rust and tosses the pillow onto the bed. He throws open the blanket and arranges it over the mattress. Rust ignores him, his back to the room as he continues to sit in the lawn chair. He's down to the last of his cigarette.

"Sure wish you had a TV," Marty says, sitting on the mattress.

The rain almost drowns out his voice.

Rust doesn't answer.

"Rust. Get the fuck over here."

He leans down and puts his cigarette out in the ashtray on the floor under his chair. He stands up and starts unbuttoning his shirt the rest of the way, turning around and stepping over to the bed. He drops his shirt to the floor, unbuckles his belt, toes off his shoes, drops his pants to his ankles and steps out of them. He's wearing a pair of boxer briefs and white wife beater that he's going to wear to bed. He keeps his socks on and sits on the empty side of the mattress, his back to Marty.

"Don't make this fucking awkward, all right?" Marty says, after a beat.

Rust smiles without meaning to, elbows on his knees and head bowed.

Marty lies down behind him, the mattress creaking as he does.

Rust takes off his watch and lays it on the carpet. He slides under the sheet and the blanket and lies down next to Marty. They're both on their back, looking up at the ceiling. Rust doesn't think this is awkward—ridiculous, maybe; funny, even—but he gets the sense that Marty's a little afraid to look over at him.

"Well," Rust says, his cowboy voice cutting through the rain and filling the room. "This is your rodeo, Hart. Now, what?"

He turns his head on the pillow and looks at Marty.

Marty looks at him, the frown on his mouth boyish.

They just stare at each other a while, the rain coming down heavier now and filling their silence. Rust realizes that this is the first time he's ever shared a bed with someone as a grown man, completely sober, and felt safe. Safe from sex, pain, and the world outside. Safe from expectations he can't meet without hurting himself.

He closes the space between his body and Marty's and curls against the other man's side, lays his head on Marty's shoulder and his palm flat on Marty's chest. It must take Marty by surprise because at first, he doesn't respond. When he does, he folds his arm across his own belly and rests his hand on Rust's arm. He rubs it a little, like Rust is a woman he's comforting. Rust feels him turn his head toward the top of his and exhale into Rust's hair.

They close their eyes and listen to the rain a while. Rust feels relaxed in a way he almost never is, without being sleepy. He wonders if Marty's asleep, then tips his head back to look at him.

Marty looks down at him through heavy-lidded eyes. "What?" he says.

It occurs to Rust, in the most quiet and matter-of-fact way, that he loves Marty. Not with the passion and anguish he has for his daughter. Not with the burdensome love he felt for his ex-wife. But with a love that's so plain and steady that it might be weeks or months old and Rust just never noticed it until now.

He tries not to feel a zing of doom on Marty's behalf or his own. If his past is an indication of his future, this love he feels isn't leading him anywhere good. But while Rust loving someone or something isn't new, Marty Hart is. Maggie, too.

"You brush your teeth?" Rust says.

"Yeah," says Marty.

Rust lays his hand over Marty's cheek and kisses him. It does taste like minty toothpaste. He breaks away, and Marty rustles them around until he's got his left arm around Rust's shoulders. They're both lying on their sides now, facing each other, Rust's head still below Marty's enough to rest on his shoulder.

"You taste like whiskey and cigarettes," Marty says.

"Were you expecting something else?" says Rust.

"Not really. I wasn't complaining."

"At least you don't have to worry about secondhand pussy, unlike me."

"Hey! I got more courtesy than that! Jesus. I used mouthwash and everything."

Rust smiles as he dips his head down again, top of his forehead against Marty's jaw.

Marty slides his hand under Rust's chin and lifts it to look at him. It's too dark to see the color of each other's eyes, but they're close enough that they can see everything else.

"Never thought you'd be here, did you?" Rust says.

"Never in a million years," says Marty. He kisses Rust gentle, noses brushing, stopping to take a breath and Rust breathes with him, then presses his lips to Rust's again. Marty hugs him as they hold the kiss, wrapping his arms around the leaner man snugger.

Rust moves out of the kiss, his top arm hooked under Marty's and around Marty's shoulder, his other arm folded between them. He tilts his forehead against Marty's and closes his eyes, feeling the warmth and weight of his friend's body against his. Feeling the safety of Marty holding him. He's never felt safe in the arms of women he fucked, not even Claire's. He was supposed to protect them, not the other way around. Nobody's ever looked out for him. Ever. And he got used to it. He's capable of taking care of himself. But there's something relieving about knowing that this man's got him and if it comes down to it, Marty will protect him. Marty will do anything it takes to keep Rust safe. Even when it's all wasted effort.

Marty kisses Rust's chin, then his lips, then his cheek against the pillow. "Want you to sleep," he says.

"Don't know if I can," says Rust. "But I'll stay here 'til morning."

Marty looks into Rust's eyes, and Rust looks into his, their heads so close that the tips of their noses almost touch. They can feel the heat of each other's breath. The look feels like Rust revealing his deepest and most private self and Marty seeing him. Seeing the most sensitive parts of him, hidden away under a thick and hard carapace that should've been a little bit thicker. Rust is dangerous, resilient, covered in blood—but he's also damaged and scarred, full of his own pain. He's less fragile now than he was. He won't fracture in a dozen places if Marty's less than gentle with him. He's not weak either, never has been. Strength is the only reason he's alive. But he's in desperate need of things. Marty doesn't even know what.

Lightning cracks loud and thunderous through the night and flashes in the windows. Rust blinks, slow and cat-like, not looking away from Marty. Letting his friend see as much as he wants. They're still holding onto each other, arms hooked around bodies and legs touching in places, not quite laced together.

If anybody saw them now, they wouldn't look like a pair of bad men. They'd look like lovers.

That makes Rust smile. Other people getting them wrong.

* * *

When Maggie steps back into her room at the Black Bear Motor Lodge, Rust is sitting on the bed waiting for her. She stops short, startled to find him there. She's got her hand wrapped around the neck of a bottle of red wine that's wrapped in a brown paper bag. He blinks at her in that owlish way of his, like he's watching a science experiment in progress.

"Did you pick the lock?" she asks, shutting the door.

"Nah," says Rust. "Pulled the cop card. Clerk let me in."

"Didn't want to wait outside?" She sets the bottle down on the small round table that looks like it's about twenty years old.

"Nope."

Maggie smoothes her palms down the front of her sweater and jeans. She has her hair up in a ponytail, and she's standing in profile before him. Rust looks at her, just looks, until he sees her beauty like the sun coming up through a mountain range. Just like a sunrise in Alaska, viewed in the strange silence of remote wilderness after a night not sleeping outside, lying stretched out in a truck bed, a night losing count of the stars and listening to the insects. A night that feels like it'll drag on and on forever, until the stars go out in waves like blown candles and the sky starts to pale, and then he sees it—deep orange light peeping from behind the purple mountains, like a mirage of the first ripe summer peach he can get his hands on after so many fruitless months.

She turns her head to look at him. "What?" she says.

Rust blinks again and comes back to the motel room. "You okay?" he says.

She bows her head again, looking at her shoes. Sticks her hands in the front pockets of her jeans and looks damn near twenty years younger. "Marty met someone."

Rust figured that's what this was about, when she called him and asked him to meet her.

"Did you know?" she asks.

He nods, when she glances at him.

"He asked me how much I wanted to know. He said he'd tell me everything, if I wanted to hear it. I didn't know what I wanted to hear."

Rust doesn't speak, knowing she just wants him to listen.

She pauses for several seconds, then says, "It doesn't hurt the way it did last time. You know, I was more angry about the affair than hurt. Not even heartbroken. Just angry. So fucking angry, like I didn't know I could be. It scared me a little."

Rust understands perfectly. In an instant, he realizes that Maggie is more like him than any woman he's ever known. Not identical, not even close. She's better than he is by a lot. But still more similar than he's ever expected a woman could be.

She notices that she's clenching her hand into a fist, opens it up again, looks at him and smiles. It's the kind of smile polite women give each other in grocery stores. A kind of acknowledgment of each other.

Rust doesn't smile back.

"They had sex," she says. "Marty didn't have to say it. I knew they did as soon as he started the conversation. I asked him if he's going to see her again, and he said maybe. Probably."

He waits a moment, then gets up and moves to stand in front of her. She looks up at him, and he looks at her. He steps in and hugs her, feeling her sag into him and against him like blowing out a breath she's been holding too long. She lays her palms flat on his back, and they just stand there a while, holding onto each other.

When he pulls back, he grips her by the shoulders and looks her in the eyes. "You are the bravest woman I've ever met," he says. "All right?"

She nods.

Their eyes search each other's face. She reaches up and pulls his hands off of her, cups his face in both of her hands and presses her forehead to his. They stay like that a beat, until he leans back just enough to kiss the top of her forehead. Rust slings an arm around her shoulders and grabs the bottle of wine on the table, still in its paper bag.

"Whatever you want to do, we're going to do it," he tells her. "And you're drinking this."

"What about you?" she says, smiling for real now.

He stretches out his arm and points with the wine bottle in his hand at the dresser, where an unopened bottle of whiskey sits on the top.

"I may have to borrow some," says Maggie.

"You're welcome to it," Rust says, steering her to the bed with his arm still around her.

They half-lie, half sit side by side on top of the comforter, their shoes off, and drink out of the bottles as they listen to the only halfway decent country station on the radio. Rust keeps his arm around Maggie, and she rests her head on his shoulder. They don't talk much. When she's halfway through her wine bottle, she looks up at him and they kiss, lips closed and crushed together. Rust, his eyes closed, sets the whiskey down on his night table and rolls his body toward hers, curling his other arm around her. She's still clutching the wine bottle carefully against his side, and they share several small kisses, looking into each other's eyes between them. When she's had enough, she tucks her head against his chest, and he just holds her, cupping the base of her skull with one hand and stroking down her back.

Eventually, Maggie rolls out of his embrace and swings her legs over the side of the bed, sitting up with her back to him. She drinks more wine, sets the bottle on her night table, then lies back down with Rust. He gets her arm around her and she presses up against him, slipping her hand underneath his shirt and undershirt, feeling his hot skin.

"Is this okay?" she whispers.

He looks at her and nods.

She runs her hand slowly up his left side, then snakes it around to his back and moves down again. She kisses jawline, pulls her hand around to his belly and curls her fingers in and out, nails scraping his skin. He hums and closes his eyes because it feels good, almost makes him want to shiver. She continues the motion for a while, and he just lies there and enjoys it.

When she stops, he opens his eyes and finds her staring at him. Rust brings his hand up to her face, strokes his thumb across her cheek, under her eye, as he looks at her.

"I'm sorry," he says.

"For what?" says Maggie.

"Not being a man you can fuck. A man who wants you like that."

"Don't be sorry. You're exactly what I need."

Rust doesn't smile, but his heart feels full of something. Maybe love.

A slow song comes on the radio, and he rolls out of the bed, pulling Maggie by the hand. It takes him a second to arrange them right, takes her a second to realize what he's doing, and she laughs.

"Really, Rust Cohle?" she says.

He's already swaying his hips and hers with him, hands clasped at the small of her back. She loops her hands around his neck and just looks at his face, smiling. They dance into the next song, then stop so Rust can smoke a cigarette.

She falls asleep drunk in his arms under the sheet and the blanket, and he lies there in the dark, listening to her breathe, thinking about her and Marty and himself. About not being able to handle one more implosion in his life. How dangerous that is, to need something to work after a lifetime of nothing working.

He wakes up in the morning realizing he fell asleep. Second time inside a week without drugs.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOLY SHIT, IT'S BEEN OVER 2 YEARS. 
> 
> But here I am, with a new chapter. And it's a long one. 
> 
> Pretty sure I'm not done with this fic, but there's no telling when I'll update. Hopefully, it won't take me half as long as this new installment did. 
> 
> Reviews are always super appreciated.

 

He’s lying there on the mattress just after five in the morning, as the dim blue twilight starts to seep into the room through the window blinds. He doesn’t hear any birds. It’s still too early for that. He got about three hours of sleep, and that’s going to have to suffice. He stares at the white ceiling, not thinking about anything at all, until he recognizes the urge to go running. He gets up and finds a pair of sweatpants in the downstairs cupboard where he keeps the clothes that don’t hang, puts them on with a pair of socks and his only pair of sneakers. He doesn’t bring his keys or lock the back door behind him, figuring this isn’t the time for a B&E and there’s nothing worth stealing in the house anyway.

It’s nippy outside, the neighborhood dead quiet under the turning sky. The sun hasn’t broken up through the horizon yet, and he can still see the moon, a feeble white husk in the west. The trees standing in front yards and back yards still look almost black, as if they soaked up the night, and the street feels eerie, like his memory of suburbia in another state, the scene of his worst nightmare come to life.

He starts jogging north, not knowing how far he’s going or what route he’s taking. He doesn’t want to leave the residential area and move out into the deserted public streets; he would rather circle back and run to the opposite end of the neighborhood instead.

His footsteps hitting the pavement are the only sound in his earshot. He’s awake and alert, completely in his body, his skin prickling in the cool air and his breathing quickened. He feels more clear-headed than he’s been in recent memory.

Rust thinks about Marty, the last time they spent the night together at Rust’s place, the way Marty held him in his sleep and how it felt to wake up draped against him. That Marty is a different man than the one he sees in the bull pen at the office, different than the man who sits at the head of his dining room table when he’s having dinner with his wife and kids. The man Marty is becoming in his relationship with Rust can only exist because of Rust, and if Rust packed his bags and left Louisiana in his rearview mirror, Marty’s new and secret incarnation would evaporate like a mirage and seem as impossible to Marty himself as it was before they met.

Sometimes, he looks into his eye, in the small circular piece of mirror glued to his living room wall, and he doesn’t know what he sees. He still doesn’t feel real, which is something left over from his Crash days but also something that has to do with his relationships.

He feels himself changing, because of Marty and Maggie. If he were someone else, he might call it healing, but he doesn’t believe he can heal from the past. Healing is a myth. All that Oprah shit. There is no closure, no returning to who you were before suffering. But there is change. Even he can’t deny that everything changes, one way or another.      

In another life, parallel universe maybe, they’d be fucking, him and Marty. The affection, the tension, the emotional intimacy they share would bubble over into erotic desire, the kissing leading naturally to sex even if neither man had any abstract attraction to men in general. In a way, that alternative scenario might be easier for Marty—unfamiliar territory with familiar rules. But here, what they have has no rules or blueprint. They’re flying blind, and maybe that should scare Rust. He wonders if it scares Marty.  

As for Maggie, Rust’s relationship with her is even more foreign to him. He’s always been attracted to women in a way he isn’t to men, regardless of his distaste for sex. He’s always found Maggie physically attractive, but that’s not the reason he has a sense of caution about their relationship. There’s always been a part of him that wanted to be close to women. His shrinks at North Shore would’ve analyzed that with all the predictable Freudian bullshit about Rust’s absentee mother, but that’s not what the longing is about, in Rust’s mind. Women are all the good things that men aren’t—devoid of the ugliness present in men, including Rust himself. He had that figured out pretty early in life, even without a mother to confirm it. All the time he’s spent and continues to spend in a world full of men who live unchecked by female observation has proven to Rust that they are the ultimate beasts of the world. Cruel, predatory, violent, and dangerous, with a will to domination. There was a time, in his youth, when he thought he would be different. Now he’s not even forty years old, and he’s shown himself just how good he is at being a man.

Maggie isn’t perfect. No woman is. But despite everything cold and hard and human in her, she still has that capacity for love and gentleness, and none of the brutality that Rust has spent most of his life stuck in. The problem isn’t so much that he could fall in love with her, the way he did with his ex-wife. The problem is that she could fall in love with him, and he can’t do that to Marty.

It’s strange to be this close to a woman, without being her lover. He’s always wanted this, even if he could never articulate it, but now that he’s got it, he doesn’t know how to manage it. He wants to be as free with Maggie as he is with Marty, but he’s afraid of what might happen if he lets her in all the way. Afraid that she’ll want sex, afraid that she’ll stop loving Marty, afraid that the whole thing will fall apart.  

Where does friendship end and romance begin? Hell if Rust knows. Maybe it’s the sex, but then again, maybe it isn’t. He loves Marty and he’s getting to love Maggie. So far, what he has with them feels better than any romantic relationship he’s ever had, in large part because he doesn’t have to put up with sex. There’s an intimacy he’s never had with anyone besides his ex-wife. Some of the touch reminds him of his marriage, mostly the kissing, but a lot of it feels expressive of the deepest, closest kind of friendship a person could have. He doesn’t want to move in with the Harts—there’s still a distinct separation between himself and their family and marriage—and he sure as hell doesn’t want to tell the world that he’s anything to them in particular. But there’s already a sense of Rust’s life being intertwined with theirs, a mutual expectation that they include each other in life-changing decisions and major events and the more mundane details of their emotions.    

Rust can’t just pack his bags and leave Louisiana.

A couple blocks after he turns around to go home, he sees something down the street, lurking in the receding shadows of a huge oak tree that stands at the edge of somebody’s front lawn. He slows down as he draws closer, recognizing the short figure as a person.

When he’s close enough to see her in detail, he freezes, suddenly losing any sense of his quickened pulse and the world around him.

A girl with long, corn silk hair stands in the road, wearing a white dress that almost glows in the dim blue darkness. She’s barefoot, no more than 10 years old. She’s wearing a crown woven from kindle, red berries dead on the stem still bright as blood, and she’s holding an antler in her right hand, like she hasn’t decided yet whether it’s a toy or a weapon.

Rust blinks and half-shakes his head, but she’s still there, staring at him from a few yards away.

He doesn’t know what to do, a familiar cocktail of dread, terror, and disbelief crawling up his chest and throat from the pit of his belly. He doesn’t want to speak, as if the sound of his voice will wake up the whole neighborhood or hell itself, and confirm that he isn’t dreaming or hallucinating.

The girl turns around without warning and runs away, faster than he’d expect a child that age capable of.

He hesitates for a moment, then starts running after her. He sees her turn left at a corner ahead and realizes once he gets there that it’s the street he lives on. But once he turns the corner, he doesn’t see her. He runs all the way back to his house, expecting to find her somewhere—maybe on his doorstep, but when he finally stops in front of his own place and turns in a circle looking for her, he’s alone.

He’s panting, a V of sweat darkening his t-shirt, more spooked than he’s been in recent memory. He keeps looking both ways down the street and searching the houses around him with his eyes for any sign of the girl. She’s gone.  

He hasn’t been high in days. This isn’t some drug-induced hallucination. He’s wide awake and sober, and she looked as real as his own hand, as real as the house and the grass and the tire swing hanging from his neighbor’s tree.

Rust heads into his house through the back door he left unlocked, half-expecting the girl to be there in the living room, but she isn’t. He checks all the rooms upstairs, looks in the closets and the laundry room, but he’s alone.

It’s past six in the morning now, still too early to call Marty at home. The birds are starting to sing.

Rust stands in his kitchen and has one of those moments he’s had too many times before.

 _Am I losing it?_ he thinks. _Am I going crazy?_

* * *

 

Marty hasn’t been to Sunday service in a couple weeks, but that isn’t the reason he slows the car down in front of Saint John’s Cathedral on his way home from work on a Tuesday night. His is the only car on the unmarked road, and he idles there before the curb, peering through the passenger window at the lit entrance to the red brick building. He checks the time on the car clock and wonders if the church is open, then pulls into the main parking lot. His car sits alone behind him as he heads for the double doors of the main entrance, and he pays attention to his surroundings, feeling self-conscious—like somebody might be watching.

The door gives when he tries it, and he pokes his head inside before fully committing. The narthex is empty and dimly lit. He heads for the next set of double doors he sees, finds them unlocked, and steps into the nave of the cathedral. He stops when he’s just inside, surveying the room. This place is more impressive than any Protestant church he’s ever been in. It reminds him of Rust, for some weird reason, and as soon as he thinks of him, Marty goes down the aisle and chooses a pew on the right hand side, not too many rows in.

He sits down and notices the Bibles and pamphlets tucked into the back of the pew in front of him. He wrings his hands in his lap and bites at his lower lip, as he forces himself to look up at the altar at the end of the aisle.

“I don’t—I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he says out loud, careful to keep his voice down. “I’m not even Catholic.” He pauses. “Feels like I haven’t talked to you in a while. Not since the Dora Lange case. I’ve been to church more since then, but I haven’t actually talked to you, like this, after that night..... when I told you about Reggie Ledoux.”

By the time he and Rust made it back to Rust’s place that night, it was after ten, and they hadn’t slept in almost forty-eight hours. They were still wearing the dirty, sweat-stained clothes from the day before. They’d gone about twenty-four hours without food and stopped at a drive-thru on the way home, even though they had little appetite. They ate in the truck parked in the driveway without speaking. They dragged themselves into the living room-turned-bedroom, stripped down to their underwear, and collapsed onto the mattress, too exhausted to shower first. Rust passed out as soon as his head hit the pillow, but Marty—he laid there, his eyes filling with tears, and prayed.

 _I killed a man today,_ he thought. _Not because I had to. Because I wanted to._

He wasn’t sure if he felt guilty for pulling the trigger or guilty for not regretting it. Just a few weeks before, he’d sat at his dining table and told his daughters he’d never fired his gun. He hadn’t been ashamed of it. Now, he’s a murderer. It doesn’t matter that the guy he killed deserved to die or that the world is better off without him. The details don’t change the fact that Marty killed someone just because he felt like it.

He asked God for forgiveness. He promised he’d never do it again.

Then, he thanked God for keeping him and Rust alive and getting them out of the whole shit show unscathed.

 _I’ll make things right_ , he thought. _I’ll do whatever I have to._

“I been meaning to talk to you,” he says in St. John’s Cathedral. “About Rust and Maggie and what’s been going on. I just don’t know how. Maybe I’m—afraid of what you’ll think. I know every preacher I’ve ever heard would say the whole thing’s wrong. Guess I’m hoping you disagree with them.”

He feels stupid about it as soon as the words leave his mouth. He knows what the Bible has to say about sex and marriage and monogamy. It doesn’t say anything about men kissing from time to time and holding each other in bed, but it’s clear about men fucking each other being a sin, so he figures it wouldn’t have anything good to say about his friendship with Rust.

And as for Marty and Maggie giving each other permission to have sex with other people? He doesn’t have to go through the whole Book with a fine-toothed comb to know what God has to say about that. He never took the Almighty’s opinion into account when he cheated on Maggie, but for some reason, this open marriage thing feels like a bigger offense than cheating.

“It doesn’t feel wrong,” Marty says, with half-hearted suggestiveness. “The affair with Lisa, that was wrong, I know that. Killing a man—that feels wrong even when it’s right.” He pauses, lost in the haunting memory of that day he shot Ledoux. “I just can’t believe you’d think that what I’ve got with Rust and Maggie is as bad as that.”

He peers up at the altar as if expecting to find God scrutinizing him there or Christ glaring at him from one of the stained glass window scenes. But the cathedral is silent and still, with no sign of the judgment and wrath that Marty fears more than he could ever admit to Rust or Maggie. He knows what they would say if they could see him here now, if he confided in them his doubts about the morality of their relationships. But Rust and Maggie don’t want or need divine approval of their actions or themselves. Maggie takes the girls to church on Easter and Christmas only out of tradition, and Rust is either an atheist or someone who believes in God as his personal arch nemesis. They can’t understand where Marty’s coming from on this.

He sighs and rubs at his forehead, checks his watch. Maggie’s going to wonder where he is if he doesn’t get home soon—but Marty gives the altar a long look and doesn’t get up from his seat, wanting an answer. Wanting peace. Is he doing the right thing or the wrong thing? If everyone and everything around him would call it wrong, how can it be right? If he’s doing something objectively and indisputably wrong, why doesn’t he feel the way he did about killing Ledoux?

“I don’t have anyone else to talk to about this,” Marty says. “I just—gimme a sign. One way or the other, I gotta know what you think. I gotta know if this is fucked up. Sorry, for swearing.”

He lingers for a minute, before standing up and leaving the pew. He pauses in the aisle and gives the altar a last look, remembering what Rust said in the first real conversation they had, the day they found Dora Lange. The cross on Rust’s wall, above the bed.

_That’s a form of meditation. I contemplate the moment in the garden, the idea of allowing your own crucifixion._

Marty can hardly believe he still remembers that. He never gave it any thought, dismissed it at the time as one fucked up line in Rust’s fucked up side of the conversation. He didn’t really know Rust then, and now that he does, he can see how that contemplation fits into Rust’s whole worldview. He can’t even piece it all together in his own head, why Rust would contemplate God allowing his own crucifixion and what he would see in it, but he gets the references to suicide and suffering and masochism, all of which unsettle him.

Marty closes his eyes and remembers that night on the couch, kissing Rust for the first time, watching Rust and Maggie kiss. The feeling of warmth uncoiling in his belly, like something sliding into place after being dislocated for too long. He remembers making love to Maggie for the first time after moving back into their house and kissing Rust in the car on the side of the road, that afternoon in Melville, the feeling of Maggie’s hand in his and the feeling of Rust’s head on his shoulder.

When he opens his eyes again, there is no angel standing before him shrouded in light, no face of Christ, no burning bush. Still, no answer. 

Marty walks out of the cathedral and crosses the empty parking lot to his car, feeling too conspicuous by himself in that wide open space, moving under God’s eye. He gets in the car and starts the engine, pausing for a moment as the man on the radio talks too fast leading up the next rock song.

On his way home, he stops at the gas station a couple minutes from his neighborhood and calls June on the pay phone. She sounds happy to hear from him. He asks her if she wants to meet him for a drink tomorrow night. She says yes.

* * *

 

Maggie tries the front door of Rust’s house first, because she knows what it would look like to the neighbors if she went straight to the side door with a bouquet in her hand. She rings the doorbell and waits, despite the fact that his truck is nowhere in sight. When she figures enough time has passed, she goes around to the eastern side of the little house, pulls open the screen and tries the door knob.

Her hunch was right. Rust left the side door unlocked.

She opens it carefully, lingering on the step outside as if somebody might be around to catch her. She goes in and shuts the door behind her, locking it without thinking. She has no idea how she knew that Rust would leave the side door unlocked, but it makes sense to her for some reason.

She stands there and surveys the living room-turned-bedroom and the kitchen. She hasn’t been here in a few months and each time she’s visited, she hasn’t stayed long. The place doesn’t look any different than it did the last time she stopped by. The mattress pushed against the wall, on the living room carpet, with the cross hanging on the wall above it. The worn lawn chair folded up and leaned against the opposite wall, where there used to be an assortment of case photos and documents pinned up. He still doesn’t have a television. There isn’t any decoration or photographs and no furniture except the table and chairs in between the living room and the kitchen. The kitchen still looks as stark as she remembers, clean enough that it seems unused.  

She goes looking for a vase in the kitchen cabinets under the counter, knowing the odds of Rust owning one aren’t good. When she doesn’t find one, she settles for the biggest glass bowl she can find, filling it with water and setting it on the counter closest to the door and the living room. She unwraps the plastic and removes the rubber bands from the bouquet, tossing them in the trash can next to the recycling bin full of Lone Star beer cans and a couple of whiskey bottles. She picked up the peonies at the grocery store on impulse, knowing they were for Rust—and now, seeing them in his house, it occurs to her that he’s the last person on earth who would appreciate such a thing. Even so, she’s glad she brought them.

Maggie explores the house, looking without touching and taking her time. She goes upstairs and finds the second floor empty. She wonders why he chose a house with a second floor if he had no intention of using it. Wonders why he moved into a house at all, instead of an apartment. She thinks about his daughter and his mysterious ex-wife, as she stands in the doorway of the bedroom and looks in at the bare walls and the unoccupied space. There is no second bedroom, and that must’ve been as deliberate a choice as picking a house over an apartment.

She tries to imagine what the house would look like if it was really lived in. If it belonged to a family or if Rust tried to make it a home for himself despite living alone. She doesn’t know what to picture, because she can’t tell anything about his taste in interior decor. He doesn’t even have a bed frame for his mattress. The table and chairs downstairs looks like the first set he laid eyes on at a garage sale or the local Salvation Army.

She tries to imagine what the house would look like if his girl were here. It leaves a bittersweet sting in her heart, even as she fills in the details with her own personal style instead of something that might be his. Earth tones and flower prints, finished wood furniture and a lot of books that aren’t about violence. Images of animals and the mountains or the forest. He might keep a rifle mounted on the wall, either downstairs in the living room or upstairs in the bedroom. Child’s things, girl things, strewn all over the place. No different than the Hart home. Framed pictures on the walls, most of them of the girl, a few of Rust with her. Maybe he’d get a dog, more for his daughter than himself. A hound dog. She can see him with one of those. She can see it all, too clearly—and the white void surrounding her starts to look more desperate.

She sags against the bedroom doorjamb. “Oh, Rust,” she says.      

Maggie would come up here to hold him in bed, if he slept in this bedroom. But if he were the kind of man who sleeps in the bedroom instead of on the living room floor, the kind of man who wanted to make this house feel like a home instead of a waystation on the road to a death too grisly for the ten o’clock news, then Maggie probably wouldn’t have the relationship that she’s got with him.

She turns away from the empty bedroom and starts to head for the stairs. She stops when she notices the linen cupboards, feeling an impulse to look inside. In the bottom cupboard, on the top shelf, she finds two short stacks of clothing neatly folded—t-shirts, a pair of sweatpants, one pair of jeans. She runs her hand over the stack of t-shirts, the cotton soft and worn with age. They seem familiar, but she’s never seen Rust wear them, as far as she remembers. She looks through them and realizes when she finds the second to last t-shirt, a faded blue LSU Tigers Baseball tee that she would recognize anywhere, that they belong to Marty.

He moved back into their house months ago, and Rust obviously can’t stand clutter. Marty must’ve left the clothes here on purpose, not in case she throws him out again but just because. He hasn’t spent a scheduled night at Rust’s place since they started getting closer, though he’s probably stopped by on nights when Maggie worked the graveyard at the hospital and he didn’t have the girls. Does he want to spend the night with Rust on a regular basis? Does Rust want him to? She’ll have to talk to Marty about it.

Maggie returns to the ground floor and looks at the pale pink peonies in the glass bowl of water. Their color draws the eye, the brightest point in the house. Peonies are her favorite flower. Not roses, not carnations, not lilies or tulips. But peonies, with their layers and layers of petals.      

She notices, for the first time, the small circular piece of mirror stuck to the wall in the living room. She goes and stands before it, seeing that it’s only big enough to reflect an eye. She looks at it, without looking into it, and tries to figure out why Rust would want to look into his own eye without seeing the rest of himself. It doesn’t surprise her that he would, though she’s never seen an eye mirror before in her life, much less met somebody who uses one.

Before she leaves, Maggie sits at the foot of the bed and observes the room. Maybe to see from Rust’s perspective, maybe just to feel what it might be like to wake up here after a night sleeping next to him. Marty mentioned to her once, months ago, that Rust suffers from insomnia. She sits on his bed, between blank white walls and below the crucifix, and wonders what Rust thinks about when he’s lying here alone in the night.

She notices the red foot locker lingering on the floor in the corner, next to the pile of crime books. She didn’t see it before, from any other angle, but now she does. There’s a big, heavy lock on it, and she knows in her gut somehow, that whatever he keeps in there, she’s better off not seeing.         

* * *

 

Rust waits in the lobby on his feet, hands on his hips, skittish as a nervous horse. He checks his watch for the third time. His appointment with Dr. Ayers, child psychiatrist on staff at Central Louisiana Children’s Hospital, was scheduled to start five minutes ago, and he’s well-aware that every doctor from Nantucket to San Diego runs late on business calls as a matter of course. He showed up early anyway, out of anxiety, figuring he’s a cop and this appointment ain’t about him, so Ayers won’t make him wait more than ten or fifteen minutes.

He hates hospitals, especially the psych wings. It hasn’t been long enough, since he got out of North Shore. Everything about this place makes his skin crawl—the white lights that wash out everybody’s complexion, the floors clean enough to see yourself in, the off-white walls that’ll make your eye twitch if you stare at them long enough. And the smell. The smell is blood and bleach mixed together, the sting of lemon juice in a paper cut.

He checks his pulse, pressing two fingers into his neck, and feels his artery throbbing. He closes his eyes and sees bright orange fire burning in the night.  

“Detective Cohle?”

He turns around to find the doctor standing in the open doorway of her office. She isn’t wearing the white coat this time, the way she was when he dropped off Audrey’s pink notebook.

“Come on in,” she says, too pleasant, like he’s visiting her at home for sweet tea and conversation.

He follows her into the room and stops a couple paces from the door, as the doctor passes him. He stands with his feet shoulder-width apart and his hands on his hips, aware that it’s a confrontational stance. It’s the way he stands in the bull pen at work, when he’s facing off with another detective or Quesada. It’s the way he’s always stood opposite anyone who threatens him.

She sits behind her desk and looks at him as if waiting for him to speak, then glances at the pair of empty chairs opposite her. “Do you want to take a seat?” she says.

“No,” says Rust. “I’ll stay where I am.”             

He can see that glimmer in her eye, the one that indicates the psychoanalysis has begun.

“Okay,” she says, leaning back in her chair.

Rust sees Audrey’s pink notebook on the desk in front of her and starts to feel weaker in the knees, so nervous that he could be sick. A memory flashes through his mind, one that hasn’t hit him in years: the moment right before his daughter’s attending doctor gave him and Claire the news, when Rust already knew what he was going to say before he said it.

Ayers doesn’t open the notebook. She just looks at Rust from across the room. “I can’t be one hundred percent confident in my assessment without talking to the child in question,” she says. “So I could be wrong about this. But based on my experience, I would say there’s a good chance that the girl who drew these has been sexually abused. The drawings are very specific and varied, especially for a child who hasn’t been told in detail what happens during intercourse.”  
  
Rust doesn’t move or speak, clenching his jaw and letting the feeling of being sucker punched in the gut wash over him.

“Something that does give me pause,” the doctor continues, “is the female in each couple appearing to be an adult woman, rather than a child. They’re all the same size as the men, and they have breasts. This isn’t usually how little girls draw themselves when depicting their own abuse. They’re usually smaller compared to the man, without any secondary sex characteristics, and often, they’ll have a sad face or no face at all. The women in this child’s notebook aren’t necessarily smiling, but they don’t have sad or angry expressions either. They don’t appear to be in distress.”

A part of Rust wants to yell at this woman for trying to be optimistic, but he knows that if he opens his mouth right now, anything could happen. He might have a panic attack or need to sit down, something. He feels like his ability to keep it together is entirely dependent upon him staying exactly where he is, in silence, like a chair bolted to the floor.   
  
“So, I’m not as confident as I typically am when I see sexual drawings made by children, that these indicate abuse of the child—but she’s obviously been exposed to sexual situations or imagery, at the very least. I would have to interview her to reach a conclusive answer.”      

The doctor watches him with that inscrutable shrink stoicism, like he’s a patient of hers. She reminds him of God. He looks at her and he hates her, the way he hates God. He may pretend to be an atheist to people like Marty, but the truth is, Rust has never been able to shake the sense that there is a god, a cold and indifferent intelligence watching human horror like it’s a fucking TV show. Maybe he believes in God just so he can hate the son of a bitch.

In any case, Rust hasn’t had a television since he moved out of the house he lived in with Claire and Sofia.

“Did you want to bring her in?” the doctor says.

He blinks at her, stony faced. “No,” he says, his voice low and husky.

She pauses, as if waiting for him to say more. “Well, I strongly recommend the child talk to a professional. If she’s been sexually abused, the sooner she gets help, the better. This kind of trauma, if left untreated, can have long-term consequences that continue into adulthood.”

Rust crosses the distance between himself and the desk and holds out his hand to the doctor. She gives him back the pink notebook.

“Thank you for your time,” he says, and leaves without looking back.

Once he’s in his truck, he just sits behind the wheel for a minute, without turning the engine. Not knowing how to feel. Not knowing what to do. “Fuck,” he says out loud. 

* * *

 

When Rust shot that meth head back in Texas, Sofia had been dead about six months. Claire had been gone less than thirty days, and contrary to his expectations, being completely alone made his life worse. By the time she packed her one suitcase and disappeared in the night without so much as a note, Rust was drinking heavy every day, binging on the weekends, starting to slip up at work, and barely speaking to Claire. But her presence, the assumption that they were in this hell together, had been his single consolation. The one thing keeping him in line. They’d been coupled five years, and she couldn’t even bother to warn him that she was abandoning him.

Being alone in that house every night, with the nursery still intact and the family photos still hung on the walls, knowing that there was not a single human being left on the face of the earth who loved him and wanted to be with him—except Travis, who had never forgiven him for leaving Alaska when he was eighteen and didn’t bother keeping in touch—was enough to make Rust put his department issue gun in his mouth about ten days after Claire bailed. Too drunk to walk, sobbing in Sofia’s room, he switched off the gun safety and put the barrel in his mouth. His finger straight against the trigger and guard, ready to curl into shooting position.

But he couldn’t do it.

He killed the meth head instead, two weeks later. Took one look at the baby girl’s corpse and emptied the entire clip of his gun into the man who killed her.

Sitting in one of the interview rooms at his office, waiting to be interrogated, he figured he’d get at least ten years in prison and end up murdered by another inmate within the first year or two. Former cops don’t do well inside. He had no illusions about what awaited him, and at that point, he didn’t care.

The way the feds framed it, the undercover job was a show of mercy. They would make the meth head situation go away, sweep it under the rug, strike a deal with the DA or the AG or whoever. He would never be charged, let alone go to trial. Rust had to ask why. Why was he going to get special treatment? Why did anyone want to do him a favor? One of the suits who offered him the out said, “You’re a good cop. And we know what happened to your daughter.”  

Rust wanted to punch him in the mouth for mentioning her. For pitying him.

But in retrospect, what the feds offered him hadn’t been mercy. Just a different kind of punishment, delivered without any intention to make him pay for what he did but with cold self-interest. Rust was disposable. A man out of options and out of personal ties. Someone they could use however they liked, for as long as they wanted him.

They knew he had no one waiting for him. That’s why they used him for four years. And Rust let them, because he had no reason to stop. He was determined to get himself killed. And finally, after four years that felt like twenty, he found himself lying in a pool of his own blood with three slugs burning in his chest, fading out in the dark. Thinking he was finally done. Finally put out of his misery.

His psychiatrist at North Shore blamed the nervous breakdown on the drug abuse and the long-term dissociation from his true identity. Blamed it on the extreme stress of the undercover assignment. But Rust is pretty sure he just couldn’t take being alive, after coming so close to escaping. Couldn’t take facing his complete aloneness. The nothingness of himself.    

* * *

 

Friday night, Marty’s watching TV when the doorbell rings. He goes to answer it and finds Rust standing on the Welcome mat, looking about as happy as Rust always looks. He’s wearing blue jeans and a flannel shirt with a forest green base, not the jacket and tie he wore to work earlier.

“Hey,” Marty says and smiles anyway.

“Hey,” says Rust, refusing to smile back.

Marty lets him in and lingers in the doorway after, looking both ways along the street.

They head into the kitchen, and Rust sits on his favorite stool at the island.

“Get you something to drink?” Marty says, opening the refrigerator. “Beer?”

“That’s fine,” Rust replies.

Marty pulls two bottles from the six pack he bought earlier and cracks them open with a bottle opener. He stands opposite Rust, on the other side of the counter in front of the sink, and they drink in silence for a bit.

Maggie’s working the graveyard shift at the hospital and won’t be back until morning. Audrey and Macie are at their grandmother’s house for the weekend. Marty decided he’d rather have Rust over, than go sleep at June’s.

“I was thinkin’ we could order a pizza,” Marty says, heading for the phone mounted on the kitchen wall. He picks it up out of the cradle. “You have dinner yet?”

“No,” says Rust. “Pizza’s all right.”

“You care what’s on it?”

“No anchovies.”

Marty dials the number off one of those pizza place take-out menus that every family in the lower 48 keeps magnetized to the side of their refrigerator and places an order for one large pizza. While he’s on the phone, Rust nurses his beer, peering and blinking at him with owlish eyes. He was torn about coming here tonight: half of him can’t stand to keep secrets from Marty, especially ones so heavy and personal as Audrey’s notebook and the girl with the antler; the other half wants a distraction, to hide his face in the comfort of Marty’s company.

He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s going to do. When he’s going to tell Maggie about Audrey. When he’s going to tell Marty about the girl with the antler—or if he’ll tell him. The two secrets mingle and itch in the pit of his stomach, part of an unfinished puzzle that he doesn’t have the rest of the pieces to. He doesn’t have evidence. He doesn’t have a name, a lead, a narrative. He doesn’t have anything concrete. And that’s what keeps him quiet, for now.  

They put away two beers each by the time the pizza delivery guy rings the doorbell. They eat in front of the TV, one man to a couch, watching a boxing match without much comment.

“You ever been in a fight?” Marty says, when they’re just about done eating.

Rust shoots him a look—the one he gives Marty and anyone else in response to a stupid question.

“On the job doesn’t count. I mean, an honest to God fight. Between equals.”

“Yes,” Rust says, staring at the TV. “More than once.”

“Undercover doesn’t count either.”

“More than once.”

Marty gives Rust his own look. “When?”

“Once in college,” Rust says. “Didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. Once not long after. Third time, was after my daughter passed. At a bar.”  

Marty grimaces, feeling bad about reminding Rust of Sofia. He doesn’t respond, hoping that he hasn’t spoiled Rust’s mood for the rest of the night.

But after a pause, Rust says, “You?”

“What?” says Marty.

“You ever been in a fight, off the job?”

Marty immediately thinks of kicking Lisa’s date’s ass in her apartment that night he and Maggie chaperoned Rust’s blind date at the Longhorn. He’s a little embarrassed by the memory, glad Rust and Maggie don’t know anything about it. “One time, in my twenties.”

“Did you win?” Rust says.

Marty glances at him. “Yeah. I won.”

They watch more of the match on TV, until Rust gets up off his couch to put his plate in the kitchen sink and his empty beer bottle in the recycle bin. Marty switches off the TV and follows him.

“I’m going out for a smoke,” Rust says, already digging his pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket.

“Wouldn’t mind sitting out on the patio,” says Marty. “We can drink this.” He takes a bottle of Jim Beam out of the cupboard next to the refrigerator and holds it up for Rust to see.

Rust nods and goes ahead out to the backyard, through the sliding glass door.

Marty brings the whiskey and two glasses.

It’s a clear night, the moon waning and about three quarters full, a bright shard of bone high up in the indigo sky. They can see more stars than usual, or it seems that way. Not half as many as in Alaska. The air’s cool, almost cold enough for jackets. They sit in the pair of wicker chairs, side by side, looking out at the yard. Rust sticks a cigarette in his mouth and lights up with his old Zippo, breathing in deep and exhaling a long stream of smoke. There’s something satisfying about smoking in cold weather. He figures his pop agrees, with the way he chain smoked in the six-month long winters when Rust was growing up.

Marty pours the whiskey in each glass, about halfway full, and hands one to Rust. They drink in silence for a while, the kind of easy silence they’ve developed on the road when they’re working cases. Rust finishes his drink first and pours himself another one, leaving the bottle of whiskey on the concrete floor, between his and Marty’s chairs. He takes his time on the cigarette, savoring it.  

Marty’s looking at him, and through the haze of intoxication, it hits him that he loves the bastard. It’s no big thing, no earth-shattering revelation. It’s like realizing you’re wearing a jacket, with no memory of putting it on; realizing you got it on because you aren’t as cold as you should be. His love for Rust fits him, comfortable and just warm enough. Soft on the inside, buttery and tough on the outside, the way a good leather jacket should be. Something that could last decades. How long has he felt this way?

Rust offers him the cigarette without a word, and Marty takes it, smoking a drag and feeling a little bit dazed. He sits with his arm on the armrest of his chair, the cigarette in his fingers, and notices the moon. Rust takes the cigarette back without asking and smokes again.

“Hey, Rust?” Marty says, after finishing his whiskey.

“Yeah?” says Rust.

“Will you stay here tonight?”

Rust glances at him. “Kinda figured I would.”

Marty pauses, relieved. Then, he says as soon as he thinks it, “You been sleeping lately?”

“Sometimes,” Rust says. “Depends on the night.”

“You still using shit?”

Rust slides him a look and doesn’t answer.

Marty remembers watching him snort cocaine off his kitchen counter, the day after they killed Reggie and DeWall Ledoux. Remembers finding an empty bottle of cough syrup in the bathroom trash can. Marty stayed drunk that first week of their paid leave, following the shooting, wracked with guilt. Finally, when Rust couldn’t take it anymore, he convinced Marty to smoke pot with him instead—where he got the stuff, Marty still doesn’t know—and they smoked and stayed high for hours, the spell of guilt and shock broken as they sat with their backs against the wall and laughed together for the first time since they’d met.

Only now does Marty realize that he’d wanted to kiss Rust then, months before that first time on his living room couch with Maggie. He forgot all about it, maybe because he wanted to.

“I care about you,” Marty says, all of a sudden. Before he can stop himself. “I hope you know that.”

Rust looks at him, then looks away. “I care about you too,” he murmurs, and takes another drag on his cigarette.

Marty is self-centered enough that he doesn’t wonder whether or not Rust loves him. He’s only concerned with his own feelings in this case, wondering what they mean. He’s never loved a man before, other than his father. All of the male friends he’s had in adulthood, he’s only ever felt a warm appreciation for at most. He had a best friend when he was a boy, and that was love, no doubt. But loving a best friend when you’re eight years old isn’t the same thing as loving another man when you’re thirty-eight.

He closes his eyes and tries to imagine having sex with Rust, all of that naked flesh, their two bodies pressed together, mouths on necks and hands grasping at muscle. But it doesn’t flow. He can’t see his own face or Rust’s, just two anonymous men, the image too close-up to show more than torsos and thighs. He doesn’t feel that heat in his groin, that lurch of desire in his stomach, that hits him when he sees Maggie or June naked. Everything about the female body does it for him, right down to the smell and taste. When he fantasizes about a woman, he always sees her face, her head thrown back in ecstasy, her mouth open, her eyes shut.

“Hey,” Rust says.

Marty opens his eyes.

“You fallin asleep on me?”

“No,” says Marty. “Just thinkin.”

Rust doesn’t have the cigarette anymore. He must’ve put it out in the ashtray under his chair.

“We can go in if you want,” he says.

Marty looks at the moon again and thinks about stopping at that Catholic church and asking God for a sign. Rust would call him an idiot, if Marty told him about that. “You believe in signs?” he says. “Like, from the universe?”

Rust blinks and pauses. “Maybe.”

They sit in silence for a stretch, as Marty deliberates over whether to tell Rust what’s been on his mind. He pours himself a second whiskey and sips on it, the taste of it warm and thick in his mouth. He’s drunk now and wonders if Rust is too.  

“Is it wrong, what we’re doing?” he says.

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” says Rust, heavy-lidded.

“You and me. The way we’ve been lately.”

Rust pauses for a second, having to read between the lines. “You mean the touching. Kissing.”

“Yeah. And just—how much time we spend together, how much we tell each other. It’s kinda like we’re—”

“Lovers,” Rust says.

“Yeah,” says Marty, reluctant to put that word anywhere near his and Rust’s relationship out loud.

“We’re not lovers, Marty.”

“I know that. But we’re not that short of lovers, Rust, and you know damn well what I mean. If any of the guys at work knew what we’re like.....”

“Oh, that’s what you’re concerned about?” Rust sneers. “The fucking guys?”

“No! I don’t give a shit about them. I’m just saying, if they walked in on us kissing in the fucking evidence locker, they’d think we’re fucking, and that’s a perfectly logical assumption to make.”

“So you’re saying we shouldn’t kiss each other unless we start fucking too?”

“No, God damn it.” Marty pinches the bridge of his nose and shuts his eyes for a beat. “I’m trying to ask if what we’re doing is wrong, morally speaking. That’s all.”

“Morally speaking, who gives a fuck?” Rust says. “You have an open marriage with your wife, you’re fucking another woman, and you’re worried about us doing the equivalent of holding hands in kindergarten?”

“When I held hands with a girl in kindergarten, I had a crush on her,” Marty says. “And I ain’t ever kissed another friend before you or shared a bed with one or any of the other shit we do. That’s what I’m saying. You know exactly what I fucking mean, so quit playing dumb.”

“You want to know if we’re doing something wrong because it might count as gay, and being gay’s wrong, huh? You decided to fucking Christianize your conscience all of a sudden?”

Rust gets up out of his chair and goes to stand at the edge of the patio, crossing his arms against his chest as he looks out at the yard. He’s got his back to Marty, and Marty looks at him without rising from his own seat, wondering how the hell this turned into a fight when all he wanted to know was what Rust thinks.

“I know you don’t care,” Marty says. “You don’t care about right and wrong, because everything’s fucking terrible and we’re all going to die and blah blah blah, two hour car ride of depressing nonsense you read in a book by a dead guy who probably couldn’t get laid. I don’t expect you to care. I don’t. I know you’re not a Christian, you don’t believe there’s a God, you think it’s all bullshit, and you think I’m a dumbass for even entertaining the idea that it’s real. You don’t have to wonder about this shit, but I do. All right? And there’s hardly anyone I can talk to about it, so I’d fucking appreciate it if you tried to take me seriously for five minutes and talk to me like a normal human being instead of an asshole with no social skills.”

Rust lifts his right middle finger in the air without turning around.

Marty lifts his left in return, even though Rust can’t see him.

They stay where they are for a minute, listening to the faint buzzing of invisible insects, and the longer he sits there in the quiet, the worse Marty feels. Finally, he stands up and makes for the door, figuring the night’s over and Rust’s going to stay mad until morning at least. He slides the glass door open and goes inside, not bothering to shut it behind him.

Rust follows him in.

“The only thing you’re afraid is wrong in this whole fucked up situation we’re in, is you and I,” Rust says, his voice raised. “Not you fucking other women besides your wife, not me and her kissing each other and sleeping in the same bed and spending time together alone, without you. All of that doesn’t give you fucking pause, doesn’t make you wonder if you’re pissing off God. Just us. Right?”

Marty looks at him with a pursed mouth and doesn’t answer.

Rust shakes his head, hands on his narrow hips. “What the fuck am I supposed to say to that?”

Marty stays quiet, watching Rust almost with a kind of petulance.

Rust turns away from him, looking at the ceiling and trying to control his emotions. He’s angry, angry at Marty for being such a predictable dumbass and angry at himself for even being in this mess.

He faces Marty again and glares at him. “You want to know what I think?” he says. “Huh? I think you don’t give a shit about God or the Bible or morality. You’re just fucking scared of being a queer. Because you don’t like them queers, do you, Marty? You don’t like fuckin faggots that go cruising for dick in those gay bars everybody pretends aren’t there, and you can’t fucking stand the thought that maybe you’re not a completely different breed of man than they are, after all. And you want me to tell you that what we’re doing doesn’t count, doesn’t make us like them, that you’re still Marty “Hot Shot Detective” Hart who goes drinking with the boys after work so you can have an excuse to brag about the women you’ve fucked and pick up twenty-something pussy, while your wife cooks you dinner at home. You want me to tell you that you’re still that guy, and we’ve got nothing to hide and nothing to lie about, because we ain’t doing anything that would make everybody else you know think you’re a fucking queer. Well, fuck you. Fuck you for even caring what they’d think and fuck you for thinking that gay shit is wrong but cheating on Maggie isn’t. You don’t even have religion as an excuse, you just pretend you do.”

Marty’s red in the face, and he looks down at the floor with more shame than Rust thought he was capable of.

Rust feels like a deflated balloon, most of his anger gone and replaced with a sense of resignation. “You want to quit this and go back to being strictly professional, fine,” he says, his tone more even. “Fuck it. I’m too old for this bullshit.”

He grabs his keys off the kitchen counter and makes for the front door, not caring that he’s drunk and not caring what happens to him once he leaves this house.

“Rust,” Marty says behind him. “Hold on.”

Marty catches up to him at the door and sets his hand against it to keep Rust from going. Rust doesn’t look at him, gripping the knob and ready to punch Marty in the face if he has to.

“Hold on,” Marty says again, his voice soft now. “I didn’t say I wanted things to change. I didn’t say that.”

“I am not going to reassure you once a week that you ain’t gay, Martin,” Rust says. “If that’s how it’s going to be, I’m done, and I don’t care what you want.”

He still doesn’t look at Marty, but Marty’s looking at him, crowding his right side.

“You’re right,” Marty says. “I’m sorry. You got me pretty well figured out, and I’m sorry if I offended you, okay? I don’t want anything to change, between us. And that’s what I’m afraid is wrong. For all the reasons you said, I guess. If that makes me a shitty person, there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m pushing forty, Rust. I thought I knew who I was—but I didn’t. You can’t blame me for being freaked out.”

Rust turns his head to look at him. There’s earnestness in Marty’s blue eyes, the kind of earnestness that always takes Rust by surprise because he’s so used to thinking of Marty as the same kind of bad man he is, that he forgets Marty’s a good one too.

“None of this freaks you out?” Marty says to him.

“No,” says Rust, and it’s the truth. He’s known who he is for a long time, and even though he’s never had relationships like the ones he’s got with Marty and Maggie, it doesn’t startle him now that he does.

They look at each other, Marty and Rust. Still at the door. And Rust knows he’s not leaving.

He goes back down the tiled walkway leading to the kitchen, living room, and dining room, and Marty follows him. He throws his keys back on the kitchen counter and gets himself another beer from the fridge, before going to sit at the dining table in the dark.

Marty grabs a beer too and joins Rust at the table, leaving the light off. It isn’t pitch black, the kitchen light reaches them enough that they can make out each other’s face, but it’s dark enough that they can keep being honest. They sit there in silence, drinking a little.

“You really don’t care what anyone thinks, do you?” Marty says.

“No,” says Rust, lifting his beer to his lips. “I don’t.”

“Sometimes, it’s not just about what they think, but what they can do to you. Other people’s judgments can ruin your life. And I don’t mean to offend you, but I got more to lose than you do. That’s just the facts.”

Rust thinks of Maggie and Audrey and Macie—of what might happen to them if CID and the neighborhood and Maggie’s parents and everybody in the Hart family’s network got it into their heads that Marty’s a homosexual. Them finding out that Maggie lets Marty screw around with other women wouldn’t be good, but not half as bad as them thinking Marty secretly fucks men.

“You’re right,” Rust says. “You do have more to lose than I do.”

“I didn’t mean—” Marty starts, then trails off as if merely acknowledging Rust’s ex-wife and dead daughter would burn Rust like a hot iron to the heart.

“I know what you meant.” Rust takes out his pack of cigarettes and his lighter and lights up, the flame showing his face to Marty just long enough to prove he isn’t upset. The lighter goes out, but the end of the cigarette glows orange in the darkness.

Marty can see the smoke rising, in a thin, white ribbon.

Rust takes a couple puffs, blows the smoke out of his mouth in a plume, and holds the cigarette in his fingers on the table. “Funny, isn’t it?” he says. “What men’ll tolerate and what they won’t.”

“How do you mean?” says Marty.

“All the pricks we work with wouldn’t give a shit if they knew you killed Ledoux outta spite. Wouldn’t give a shit if they knew all the things I’ve done on the job. Might even respect us more, if they did know. But they’d want to run us out of there for sleeping together.”

Marty thinks about that and takes a drink. He’s not sure what makes him feel worse: the fact that Rust’s right about the other detectives and cops, or that he used to be one of them.  

Rust has had to reconcile a lot in his life, but this, this side of him he didn’t know about or thought was long gone in the ashes of his old self, is new enough to surprise him just a little. He’s every bit as rough as Marty, rougher in some ways because of the things he’s done and seen and suffered, dangerous in a way that Marty and the other CID detectives don’t quite embody. He can be brutal and immune to brutality—and he doesn’t know what to make of this tenderness in him that has sprouted through those layers of depravity and soulless desensitization, like a strange weed or one of those pink peonies that Maggie left in his kitchen. It’s almost like being Crash again, walking through the outside world as one thing and privately knowing he’s someone else, losing his sense of which man is the authentic one.

This man he is now, with Marty and Maggie, is not someone he’s been before. But he isn’t shocked that this is who he’s become. It still feels a little unreal but not unnatural.       

Marty looks at Rust through the dark, biting his lower lip, afraid to ask the question but too curious to hold back. “Have you ever—with a man?”

“No,” Rust says. He lifts the cigarette to his mouth and takes a drag. “Didn’t really occur to me when I was young, one way or the other. I wasn’t ever opposed to it outright, I just didn’t think about it. And the older I got, the more I wanted to spend my personal time with women, because I only ever saw the worst of men. Then, I met Claire and that was that.”

Marty feels a strange gladness that Rust’s never had a male lover. It isn’t couched in jealousy or possessiveness, so much as an instinctual knowledge of how much worse bad sex can be when you do it with a man instead of a woman. He’s glad, even if it isn’t clear in his own head, that Rust doesn’t have any bad memories of kissing men, sleeping next to men, being close to men—that Marty himself doesn’t dredge up old feelings Rust wants to bury.

“Maggie know you’re this worked up?” says Rust.

“Not really,” Marty replies.

That doesn’t surprise Rust.

“I don’t think she’d have any more sympathy than you,” Marty says, and grins a little as he shakes his head.

“You don’t know how lucky you are,” Rust tells him, before he realizes what he’s saying. “That woman. Those kids.”

Marty pauses, knowing that he’s got to be careful in this territory. “You know, if you ever want to try again—with a woman, you can. It’s okay, for you to want that, Rust.”

“I don’t.” Rust picks up his beer and drinks, then smokes. “I don’t want what you have. I’m just telling you to be grateful. And don’t fuck it up again.”

Marty’s not sure he believes Rust has given up on women and family, though he can’t picture a woman who could spend the rest of her life living with Rust Cohle. Much less a woman who would happily settle down into a sexless marriage. Some part of Marty selfishly hopes that Rust doesn’t get another girlfriend, doesn’t remarry or have more children—just because he knows all that would be the end of Rust’s intimate ties to him and Maggie. He feels guilty about it as soon as the thought occurs to him and tries to drink it away.

Then, the idea of Rust still living alone like a fucking monk in that empty house that feels like a mortuary, twenty years from now, hits Marty. And it’s so depressing and unbearable, he chokes up for a moment, and thanks Christ it’s too dark for Rust to see.

Rust puffs on the cigarette and drinks more of his beer, sensing some kind of emotional tension in the air between them. For a split second, he wonders if he’s made Marty feel guilty, but he can’t be bothered to care if he has. Rust has always believed in taking responsibility for his own fuck-ups, and he holds everybody else to the same standard, no exceptions. He’s never been mad at Marty for the affair and acting like a jackass about his family, but a small part of him resented Marty back then, when they were working Dora Lange’s case. Rust likes to mind his own business, but he’s a critical man. And while he intellectually understands that the whole man/woman drama, as he put it to Maggie, is nature’s biggest scam meant only to facilitate reproduction, emotionally he has never been able to comprehend cheating, let alone go easy on the people who do it. That’s probably due to his own lack of interest in sex, as much as his ethics. In any case, Maggie didn’t deserve what Marty did—no good woman does—and that Marty could be willing to risk his marriage and his family, could be so arrogant and dumb as to believe he’d be the first man in history to get away with infidelity, irritated Rust even back then, when he barely knew the Harts. If Marty had pulled that shit now, Rust would probably kick his ass himself.   

“Why do you care so much about this?” Marty says, all of a sudden. “I don’t get it.”

Rust taps the ash off his cigarette into the ash tray Maggie bought for him a few months back. It appeared on the dining table one night, without announcement, when Rust came over for dinner. She smiled at him when he noticed it, and he didn’t have to ask if she or Marty had picked up a new bad habit.

“You know, part of me’s worried you don’t really want any of it,” Marty continues, slurring his words a little bit. “That I’m—‘m forcing it on you or you just put up with the physical stuff because you know I like it.”

“Marty,” Rust says, far too patient. “You should know by now that I don’t do anything I don’t want to, outside the job.”

“You don’t even like sex. You’ve never been with a man. And I didn’t realize it before but that’s another piece of this that’s been eating at me. I don’t want to be another person who took advantage of you, made you do things you didn’t like. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Rust scoffs at the word “hurt”—and it’s a strange, harsh sound in the quiet darkness of the house. The idea of anyone caring about Rust’s hurt or thinking that it’s even possible for him to live his life without hurt, is as ridiculous as religion. And it’s the kind of statement that makes Marty sound wildly innocent, for the kind of man he is.

“I’m fucking serious, Cohle,” Marty says, sounding a little firmer now. “I know I can be an asshole, but I don’t want to be that kind of asshole. Especially not to you.”

Rust actually smiles at that, just a bit. “We’re not having sex,” he says. “So I don’t see what that has to do with anything. If I didn’t want you touching me, I’d tell you to fuck off. I care a lot less about pleasing you than you think.”

Marty doesn’t answer, and Rust can tell he’s sulking, even though he can’t see him.

“Look, I’m the one who kissed you first, right?” Rust says. “I touch you without being asked, don’t I? Why would I do that shit if I had a problem with it?”

Again, Marty remains silent.

“I think you’re just freaked out that you might be a bigger queer than me, even though you aren’t. Just because you like sex and I don’t, doesn’t mean you’re more into this thing than I am. Why would it? It’s not about sex. Unless there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“I don’t secretly want to fuck you, Rust,” Marty says.

“All right, then. So my point stands.”

Marty finishes off his beer, and Rust takes the last few drags off his cigarette, before putting out the butt in the ash tray. It occurs to Rust that he hasn’t answered Marty’s first question.

“This isn’t fucking easy for me to say, so you better remember it when you sober up,” he says. “I want this. You and Maggie. I want it more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time. And I need you. Okay?”

Marty bobs his head, wishing he could see Rust’s face now. He can hear how serious Rust is, in the man’s voice. “I believe you,” he says, when he remembers that Rust can’t see him either.

“Good.”

Marty leans forward and puts his face in his hands, elbows on the table. “Fuck,” he says. “I ain’t been this drunk in a while. What time is it?”

“I don’t know,” says Rust. “Let’s go to bed.”

They get up and wander through the darkened house, Rust bumping into Marty as he follows him, the alcohol hitting them harder as soon as they’re vertical and moving. Marty uses the wall as a guide, one hand dragging against it, and at some point, Rust grabs onto his t-shirt and doesn’t let go until they finally make it to the master bedroom in the back of the house.

Marty flips the light on, and they both squint in it, Rust shielding his eyes with one hand as he heads into the bathroom. He pisses away some of the whiskey and beer, then washes his hands and rinses the tobacco taste out of his mouth. Checks himself out in the mirror—he looks as drunk as he feels.

When Rust comes back out of the bathroom, Marty’s sitting on the bed in his underwear and a different t-shirt, his eyes closed. Rust sits on the ottoman in front of the matching upholstered chair and takes off his boots and socks, then stands up and strips off his pants and plaid shirt. He leaves the white, sleeveless undershirt on and goes to sit next to Marty, like they’ve got more talking to do. Marty opens his eyes, pauses, then gets up and heads for the bathroom. Rust waits for him with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. He did not intend to get this drunk, and now he’s going to wake up hungover.

Marty comes back and sits next to Rust again, looking a little more alert, like he splashed water on his face. “You ready to crash?” he says.

“Mmhmm,” Rust replies, still leaning his elbows on his knees. He’s dropped his hands down from his face and has his eyes shut.     

Marty lays his hand on Rust’s back and strokes it a little, then stops but keeps his hand there. After pausing a while, he starts to rub circles in Rust’s back, as if Rust needs comforting. It’s a hypnotic gesture to Marty, tracing the same circle over and over. Rust hangs his head and exhales.

After a couple minutes, Marty says, “You want a real massage?” He squeezes the back of Rust’s neck. “I know you’re tense as all get out. Walk around lookin’ like you’re ready for someone to punch you.”

“Just about every guy I meet wants to punch me,” Rust says. “Yeah, if you’re offering. I’ll take it.”

Marty pulls his legs up into the bed and sits high up in the center, facing the foot. Rust follows and sits in front of him, so tired and drunk that he could almost cry for sleep, but he’s not turning down a free back rub.

Marty pets Rust’s back a bit, then says, “Be easier if you took your shirt off.”

Rust peers over his shoulder at him with one eye, then peels his undershirt up over his head and flings it in the direction of his other clothes. Even in his drunken haze, he feels vulnerable and strange, half-naked in front of Marty. They’ve seen each other shirtless before, in the locker room at work and when Marty stayed at Rust’s place during his separation from Maggie, but this is different.

Marty starts massaging Rust’s shoulders, finding them just as tight and hard with muscle as he expected. Rust forgets about feeling weird and just closes his eyes, grunting at the pain and the strength of Marty’s hands.

“Better not tell Maggie about this, or she’ll be pissed I haven’t rubbed her back in forever,” Marty says.

“I’ll rub her back my damn self, just because you said that,” says Rust, his voice strained and taut. “Shit, that hurts.”

“Want me to stop?”

“No. Keep going.”

Marty can’t help but notice how Rust is built: how narrow his shoulders and back are compared to Marty’s own, how he’s lean and sinewy with a smaller frame compared to Marty and most of the other men they work with. There’s something delicate about Rust’s features, his body streamlined, his fists compact. Marty’s seen him move—he’s fast and dangerous, more brutal than most men Marty’s met—but Rust isn’t physically intimidating on first glance. He doesn’t look like a cop. A lot of guys, you can tell, even when they’re out of uniform. Marty figures he’s one of those types, he’s been in the force so long. But Rust, in jeans and a flannel on the weekends, without his badge or his gun, looks like anything but a cop. Sure as hell not a killer.         

Rust sits with his knees up and his arms resting on them, hanging his head as Marty works some of the tension out of his back. He closes his eyes and doesn’t make a sound, just enjoys the feeling of Marty’s strong hands kneading his muscles. He can’t remember the last time somebody touched his bare back like this—probably the last woman he had sex with, during the Crash years. Most of the sex he had then is lost to him, blacked out by drugs and alcohol and the brain damage they caused. He remembers most of the violence, including the grotesque, but not the sex. The feeling of all that sex has stayed in his body. A profound and bottomless loneliness, the kind that could drive you out of your mind if it lasts too long.

That’s not what he feels now, with Marty. Here, he feels good. He feels safe.

Marty reaches up and grabs Rust’s neck, working on those muscles for a while. It gives Rust a sudden flashback of his pop, who used to grab him by the scruff of the neck when he was a boy, the only sign of affection Travis ever gifted him. Rust shudders, taken aback by the memory, the feeling, the unexpected pang of longing to see that old bastard again.   
  
When Marty stops grasping at the back of his neck, Rust is ready to pass out, though he’d be happy to let Marty keep massaging until he’s asleep.  

“All right, lie down,” Marty says. “Put your head in my lap.”

Rust glances over his shoulder at him, just skeptical enough even with his guard down. “You gonna smother me with your pillow?” he says.

“No. Although that’s one way to make sure I never have to listen to you in the car again.”

Rust lies down and rests his head in the cradle of Marty’s crisscrossed legs, not knowing what Marty’s up to and not caring all that much. When Marty presses his fingertips into Rust’s scalp and his forehead, Rust shivers, sucks in a breath, and makes a noise something like a purr.

Marty smiles. “Guess I’ll be doing this again,” he says.

Rust doesn’t answer. He lies there feeling like he’s melting into the bed, as Marty rubs his temples and brow and digs into his hair to knead the scalp.

Marty watches Rust, looking at his face and his chest moving with his breath. He smiles, pink-faced drunk, as warmth blooms in his belly that matches the warmth of Rust’s skin under his touch. He carefully lifts Rust’s head and slides his hands beneath it, to rub the base of Rust’s skull and his neck. He’s got to try hard to keep his eyes open, his brain shrouded in the raw cotton sense of intoxication, on the verge of blackout but not quite there. He can’t think much of anything or focus with his mind. All that’s clear to him is his hands on Rust. When his fingers go still at nape of Rust’s neck, he sits there for a while and just holds Rust’s head in his hands, feeling the weight of it and the softness of Rust’s hair.

“Rust,” he says. “Don’t think I can stay awake anymore.”            

Rust doesn’t move or answer at first, then sighs and sits up. He goes to turn the lamp out and stumbles back into the bed, in the dark.

At first, they lie side by side, not touching. Rust can smell Maggie in her pillow, and for a moment, he’s walking through a grove of magnolia trees in the cold, their white flowers bright against a darkened landscape.

Then, Marty finds his hand under the blanket and sheet and laces his fingers in Rust’s. They lie there like that for a while, floating on the surface of sleep without going under somehow. Holding hands. The threatening world melts away, locked out like angry dogs at the door, and Rust is no longer alone in it.  

He can feel himself slipping away, and just before he does, he lets go of Marty’s hand and rolls on top of Marty. He lies face down on Marty’s chest, the lower half of his body on his side of the bed and one arm hooked under Marty’s shoulder. Marty touches Rust’s other arm reflexively, settling under the weight and heat of his friend.  

Finally, they sleep.       

* * *

 

When Maggie gets home in the morning, Rust’s pickup is still parked on the curb outside. She knew Marty had him over last night and wonders if Rust slept here or if he’s just returned for some reason. She pulls into the garage, passing Marty’s car in the driveway, and feels a little bit of dread at the thought of needing to stay awake any longer, on account of Rust’s presence.

She finds him in the kitchen, wearing a pair of Marty’s sweatpants and a white undershirt, cooking with a cigarette in his mouth. He smiles at her, clearly happy to see her, and she smiles back.

“Hey,” she says, hanging up her purse on the coat rack.

“Morning,” Rust replies, taking the cigarette from his lips. He’s got a spatula in his other hand.

Maggie leans onto the island counter and watches him. “What are you doing up this early?”

“Making breakfast. You want some?”

“No, thank you. I really just want to go to bed.”

Rust nods. “You look tired,” he says.

“You look hungover,” she says.

“Guilty.”

“Where’s Marty?”

“Still asleep. And he’ll be just as hungover as I am once he comes around, which is why I took it upon myself to handle breakfast.”

“You could’ve just slept in and taken him to McDonald’s for an egg McMuffin,” Maggie says.

“This may come as a surprise,” Rust says. “But I avoid fast food when I can.”

“Oh, really.”

“Mmm.” Rust picks up his coffee mug from the counter next to the stove and takes a drink, cigarette still in his fingers. “You go on and sleep. I don’t need company.”

Maggie smiles and says, “Okay.”

She straightens up off the island and turns away to leave.

“Hey,” Rust says.

She stops and looks at him.

“C’mere.”

Maggie goes to Rust, and he pulls her into a hug, cigarette clamped in his mouth again. They hold onto each other for a long beat, until Rust pulls back just enough to look at her. There’s something in his eyes that she can’t identify, but his face is relaxed and affectionate. She lifts her hand up to push that loose lock of hair back from his brow, sweeping over the back of his head until she cups his neck. She takes the cigarette from his lips with her other hand and stretches to kiss him. He gives her that pleasant, doe-eyed look in response, as she slides her hand down from his neck to his chest and rests it there for a moment. She gives him back his cigarette and heads for the master bedroom.

“If you go home before I wake up, I hope you come back before the weekend’s over,” she says as she leaves.

“I’ll be here,” Rust says.

Marty’s still dead asleep when Maggie reaches their room, and he doesn’t hear her come in. She toes off her shoes and undresses, throwing her blue scrubs in the hamper. She takes off her bra and puts on a t-shirt she sleeps in, then climbs into bed next to Marty. She presses herself against his back, throwing her arm around his waist and sliding her leg between his.

As she passes out, she thinks about how much she likes Rust being in the house and how nice it would be if he lived here.    

* * *

 

There was a time when he couldn’t picture where he was going to end up. Fresh out of college, not yet police, he would try to imagine his future, see himself in ten years or twenty, but always came up blank. He figured it was because he didn’t know what he wanted, but a few years later, when he was dating Claire and she asked him one night in bed where he saw himself at forty, there was still nothing. Rust began to wonder if it wasn’t just a lack of direction but an omen—if he couldn’t see himself that far into the future because he wasn’t going to make it there.

When he became a father, he forgot all about the black void in his imagination. He lived in the moment, because every moment with Sofia was something new, something he wanted to savor. He wasn’t interested in the future, assuming that he had one with her. He didn’t want her to grow up too fast.

When she died, life itself became that void. He couldn’t fathom the future because in any given moment, he couldn’t fathom living another year, another month, another week. Let alone ten years. Or twenty. All the light had been sucked out of the world, and he couldn’t see anything in front of him. Time got away from him in endless drinking, then manic work. Claire left, and he was forced to face the nothingness of his life, a life he didn’t want anymore. That he couldn’t see a future for himself was a comfort. If he couldn’t pull the trigger, with his department-issue sidearm in his mouth, then he could find a way to get himself killed on the job.

Now, he’s past all that, enough that he isn’t on a suicide mission. He is not the man he thought he would be, when he was twenty. His life is nothing like he could’ve imagined as a boy. He is nothing that boy would recognize.

He still can’t see his future. He’s been trying not to expect his relationship with the Harts to fail. He’s been trying—didn’t know he was doing it, but he was—not to be fatalistic. But if he stops to ask himself whether or not he can see the three of them together in ten years or twenty, he’s got to admit that he can’t. That the idea of this weird, nameless thing surviving so long feels like a fantasy. He can’t even say with confidence that Marty and Maggie’s marriage will last, and that’s got a hell of a lot more anchoring it down than what he has with either of them.

Rust hurts for Sofia whenever he’s drunk, but that’s not the only reason he avoids drinking alone now. The other reason, the one he’d never admit to anyone, is that old superstition wrapped in longing that comes back to haunt him. Death. Death coming for him soon and Rust welcoming it.

In some deeply buried part of him, too sensitive and human to bring out into the light, Rust has started to dwell on the void in his future where Marty and Maggie could be, giving into that old longing for an early death.  

* * *

 

He drives back to Erath alone, as dusk swirls around Louisiana like hot ash in the sky. The last of daylight burns along the horizon line in a fiery orange. Audrey’s pink notebook rests on the passenger side of the bench seat, on top of his black ledger. He turns onto the dirt road that cuts through the field where they found Dora Lange, his truck tires kicking up clouds of dust in his wake. He pulls up to the edge of the field and parks, grabs the pink notebook and gets out of the truck.

He starts down the skinny dirt path that leads off the road, heading for the huge oak tree under which Dora Lange was knelt. Maybe it’s because he’s alone this time, but this place feels eerier than it did before. His stomach knots up the closer he gets to the tree, as if he’s going to find something there. A new body or a devil’s trap or the little girl with the antler who appeared to him in the streets of his neighborhood.

But there’s nothing waiting for him, except a huge circular nest woven together with switches and sticks that sits at the base of the tree. There’s a hole in the center, big enough to put his hand through. Rust rounds the tree, looking at the ground near the trunk and up into the branches. The leaves shudder in the wind, and the field begins to ripple and sway. He steps out from beneath the tree’s limbs and searches the landscape for someone watching, someone who might’ve followed him or who lay in wait all along. He holds the pink notebook in his right hand, against his thigh, and tries to remember the drawings in Dora Lange’s diary. Spirals. Circles and stars. He watches the sky change color, as if it’s no more than a thick sheet hiding a monster that moves behind it. A vision, his damaged neurons firing. He squeezes the notebook.    

Rust turns back to the tree—the altar of sacrifice to a psychotic god, created in man’s image—and kneels where she knelt. He sets the notebook on the ground before him but doesn’t open it. He reaches out to touch the nest and lifts his eyes to the canopy again, not knowing what he’s looking for or what he expects.

All he’s got is a bad feeling.


End file.
